]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2018/the-worlds-worst-panorama-2018/feed/0Namibia – What Worked and What Didn’thttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2018/namibia-what-worked-and-what-didnt/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2018/namibia-what-worked-and-what-didnt/#respondMon, 10 Dec 2018 07:40:24 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=2191Continue reading →]]>Here are some facts ands figures about our trip, and some guidance for prospective travellers and photographers.

Cameras and Shot Count

I took around 2900 shots (broken down to 2788 on the Panasonic G9, 78 on the GX8, and a handful each on my phone, the Sony Rx100 and the infrared GX7). A fair proportion of these were for "multishot" images of various sorts, including 3D, focus blends, panoramas (especially at Wolwedans), HDR / exposure brackets (essential at Kolmanskoppe), and high-speed sequences (the bushmen demonstrations, and a few wildlife events). I’m on target for my usual pattern: about a third to half the raw images will be discarded quickly, and from the rest I should end up with around 200 final images worth sharing.

The G9 was the workhorse of the trip, and behaved well, although it did have a slight blip mid-trip when the eye sensor got clogged and needed to be cleaned. It’s battery life is excellent, frequently needing only one change even in a heavy day’s shooting, and the two SD card slots meant I never had to change a memory card during the day! The GX8 did its job as a backup and for when I wanted two bodies with different lenses easily to hand (the helicopter trip and a couple of the game drives). However it is annoying that two cameras which share so much technically have such different control layouts. If I was a "two cameras around the neck" shooter I would have to choose one or the other and get two of the same model. As I’ve noted before, my Panasonic cameras and the Olympus equivalents proved more usable on the helicopter trip than the "big guns", and if you’re planning such a flight then make sure you have a physically small option.

As notable as what I shot was what I didn’t. This trip generated no video, and the Ricoh Theta 360-degree camera which was always in my bag never came out of its cover. Under the baking African sun the infrared images just look like lower resolution black and white versions of the colour ones, and after a couple of attempts I didn’t bother with those, either.

This was the first trip in a while where I didn’t need to either fall back to my backup kit, or loan it out to another member of the group. One of the group did start off with a DOA Nikon body, somehow damaged in the flight out, but his other body worked fine. There was an incident where someone knocked his tripod over and broke a couple of filters, but the camera and lens were fine. Otherwise all equipment worked well. Maybe these things are getting tougher.

Namibia is absolutely full of sand, and there’s a constant fine dust in the air which is readily visible if you go out in the dark with a torch. This gets all over your kit especially if you go trekking through the dunes (tick), spend all afternoon bouncing through the savannah in an open jeep (tick), encounter a sandstorm (tick), or spend half a day in a ghost town world famous for its shifting sands (BINGO!!!). The ideal solution to remove the dust is a can of compressed air, but they really don’t like you taking one on a plane. On previous trips to dusty environments I’ve managed to get to a hardware store early on and buy a can, but that wasn’t possible this time. Squeezy rubber bulbs are worse than useless. In the end I just wiped everything down with wet wipes, but it’s not ideal. I’ve now found a powerful little USB blower (like a tiny hair drier) which may work, but I won’t be able to really test it until the next trip.

It’s a good practice to check your sensor at the end of every day, especially if like me you use a mirrorless camera usually with an electronic shutter (meaning the physical shutter is often open when you change lenses). I recently purchased a "Lenspen Sensor Klear" which is an updated version of the old "sensor scope" but with proper support for APS-C and MFT lens mounts. That was invaluable for the daily check, but in practice I didn’t find sensor dust to be a significant problem.

The subject matter is very much landscape and wildlife. Others may have different experiences, but I suggest for art, architecture, action and people you should look elsewhere.

Travel

Setting aside my complaints about the Virgin food service and the Boeing 787, the travel all worked well. The air travel got us to and from Windhoek without incident. Wild Dog Safaris provided the land transportation, with Tuhafenny an excellent, patient, driver/guide, and a behind the scenes team managing the logistics and local arrangements. The latter were mainly seamless and without issue, although there was a bit of juggling regarding some of the transport at Sossusvlei, and some of the departure airport transfers. I would certainly recommend Wild Dog Safaris.

If you want to cover anything like the sort of ground we did on a Namibia adventure, then you will spend a lot of time on the road. I reckon that on at least 7 days we spent 5 or more hours travelling, and on most of the others we probably managed 2+ on shorter hops or travelling to specific locations. According to Tuhafenny’s odometer we racked up 3218 km, or about 2000 miles, and that excludes the mileage in open 4x4s provided by the various resorts. The roads were at least empty and usually fairly straight and smooth, even those without tarmac, although the odd jolt and bump was inevitable. However we all managed to get some decent sleep while on the road, and I could dead-reckon our ETAs fairly accurately at 50mph, which is a far cry from the 10mph average I worked out for the Bhutan trip!

Although most locations have airstrips, there doesn’t seem to be any equivalent of the air shuttles which move people between centres in Myanmar, at least not unless you have vast funds for private charters. Just make sure you have a soft bottom and something to keep you entertained on the journeys.

Practicalities

I was advised beforehand travel to carry cash (Sterling) and change it in Namibia, on the same sort of basis as my Cuba, Bhutan and Myanmar trips. That was complete nonsense. In Namibia all the larger merchants happily take cards and there are ATMs in every town. Changing £200 at the airport was painless enough, but my attempt to change £90 in Lüderitz turned into one of the most annoying and convoluted financial transactions I have been involved in, and I’m tempted to include buying cars and houses in the list! Namibia hasn’t quite got to the point where you can just wave your phone at the till to buy an ice-cream, but it’s getting there quickly.

Another bit of complete nonsense is "it’s cold in the desert". Yes, it may be a bit chilly first thing some mornings, but I needed a second layer over my T-shirt for precisely two short pre-dawn periods. Obviously if you’re the sort of person who gets a chill watching a documentary about penguins, then YMMV, but I was clearly heavy a sweatshirt, a couple of pairs of long trousers and one raincoat. In addition to shorts and T-shirts one fleece, plus the jacket and trousers for the trip home, would be adequate.

On a related subject, there’s one thing that almost all the hotels got wrong. Apart from right at the coast daytime temperatures are up well into the 30s if not the 40s, and the temperature inside most of the lodgings at bed-time was in the high 20s, dropping to the low 20s by the end of the night (all temperatures in Celsius). In those temperatures I do NOT need a 50 Tog quilt designed for a Siberian Winter. One sheet would be plenty, with maybe the option of a second blanket if absolutely necessary. The government-run lodge at Sossusvlei got this right, no-one else did.

It may be dusty, and there are little piles of dung everywhere from the local wildlife, but beyond this Namibia is basically clean. You can drink the tap water pretty much everywhere, and it’s not a game of Russian Roulette having a salad. It made a welcome change from the experience of Morocco and my Asian trips not having to manage our journey around tummy upsets, which is just as well when we had at least two stretches of over 150 miles without an official stop. Obviously sensible precautions like regular hand cleansing apply, but Namibia really presents less of a challenge in this area.

The larger challenge of the Namibian diet is that there’s a lot of it. Portions tend to be large, and there’s a lot of red meat, frequently close relatives of the animals you have just been photographing. I was fine with this, but I suspect vegans should not apply. Between the food, the beer and snacks in the bus I definitely put on about half a stone, which I’m desperately trying to lose again before Christmas…

Communications are good in the larger towns, but elsewhere you may struggle for a mobile signal and the roaming costs for calls, texts and particularly data are very high. WiFi worked well at the town locations, but at the more remote sites service was intermittent and almost unusably slow. On the other hand, we were in the middle of Africa! This is one of those cases where you wonder not that a thing is done well, but that it is done at all. (The odd exception, again, was Sossusvlei, where they charged about £3 a day, but the bandwidth was excellent.) However Namibia is a country where practical problems get fixed, and I suspect in 5 years this will be a non-issue. In the meantime if you want to do anything more than check the news headlines (say, just for the sake or argument, update a photo blog :)) then plan ahead and batch updates ready for when you’re somewhere more central.

I did suffer one related annoyance. On a couple of occasions an Android app I was using to entertain myself on the long drives just stopped working pending a licensing check, which couldn’t be completed until I got connectivity at the end of the day. There’s not much to be done about this, apart from a post-incident moan to the app developer to make the check more forgiving. It’s worth having a Plan B for anything absolutely vital.

Do carry a small torch. It’s great to get away from light pollution, but the flipside is that it’s dark (shock, horror!!) As well as for night photography we often had to walk quite long distances between our accommodation and the resorts’ central areas, with minimal lighting, and you really don’t want to trip over a sleeping warthog or tread in a pile of oryx poo. I have a tiny, powerful cyclists’ head torch which is ideal. It’s also rechargeable via USB, although as far as I can remember it’s still on its first charge from when I bought it in 2015, so I’m not quite sure how that works.

Finally, retail therapy. Surprisingly for a country trying to optimise the income from high-value eco-tourism, there was almost nothing to buy until we got back to Windhoek and visited a craft market. Most resorts had a shop, but I wasn’t impressed by the merchandising, and when I did find something I liked it was usually not available in my size (clothing), or language (books). It’s not the purpose of the trip, but I do like the odd bit of retail therapy. There’s an opportunity for some enterprising young Namibians.

In summary, Namibia is a very civilised way to see the wild. Some of the wild is not quite as wild as it might be, but that’s part of the trade-off which makes it so accessible, and this certainly worked for me.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2018/namibia-what-worked-and-what-didnt/feed/0The Twin-Lens Reflex :)http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2018/the-twin-lens-reflex/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2018/the-twin-lens-reflex/#respondWed, 28 Nov 2018 16:12:29 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=2173Continue reading →]]>I noticed while gathering for the bushman walk that five of our group were "packing" a pair of Canons. This shot was inevitable.

Thanks to John B for the title – excellent photographer’s joke. I am happy to explain if required.

My Panasonic GX8 arrived pretty much on the day of official availability and has been my primary camera for almost three years, including two major photographic trips, and innumerable other opportunities in between. It improved on the already good GX7 with "just right" sizing, a better sensor and higher speeds. Like many other owners and fans I was looking forward to a fairly straight replacement – all Panasonic had to do was fix the awkward exposure compensation control and improve the action autofocus and it would be pretty much perfect. Fat chance.

Instead, and not for the first time, Panasonic have shaken up the Lumix G range, with the GX9 effectively moving down the range, and all the new goodness going into a new "stills flagship" the G9, which sits at the top alongside the video-centric GH5 and its variants.

After a bit of prevarication, I decided that I was due an upgrade, and plumped for the G9. My new camera arrived a few days ago. This review is based on the first few days’ moderately heavy use. It’s not meant to be a comprehensive, or dispassionate blow-by-blow review, but a set of personal impressions from a long-standing Panasonic user and fan.

Body Style and Size

At first the G9 looks like quite a different camera, larger and more expensive, and more of a "DSLR ethos" than the rangefinder-style GX8. I’ll come back to cost, but the size issue is deceptive: put the two cameras side by side and it’s clear that the only real difference is the G9’s DSLR "hump", and a slightly deeper grip, which is academic unless you use a very small pancake lens. Given that similarity it’s surprising that the G9 is a significant 171g (about 6oz) heavier. The camera offers better weatherproofing and a bigger battery, and does feel a bit more rugged, so that’s acceptable. Unlike its predecessor, but like my old Canon 7D, it feels like it might take the odd knock without problems. In practice, you get used to the weight quite quickly.

Like every new flagship camera the G9 is initially priced high, but this gives Panasonic and their dealers some room for manoeuvre with discounts, trade-ins and freebies. Depending on how you look at it my G9 cost me only about 2/3 of the advertised price, or the 5 year lifetime cost of my old GX7 net of trade-in was about £250. I can live with that.

Controls and Ergonomics

Back in early 2016 I wrote an open letter to Panasonic regarding the GX8, acknowledging its good points, but identifying opportunities to improve the ergonomics and usefully extend its stills capability. They clearly ignored the letter for the GX9, but either great minds think alike, or it did influence the G9.

Ergonomically, I am a fan of "electronic" control, by which I mean the ability to set camera functions fluidly between on-camera buttons and wheels including your choice of programmable controls, the menu system, and stored custom values. By contrast "fixed switches" break this free control model and cannot be included in stored settings for custom shooting modes. In addition, I am short sighted and wearing my "distance" glasses the tiny markings on such controls are effectively invisible.

The GX8’s exposure compensation control is a good (or should that be bad?) example of the latter. Apart from breaking my preferred control model it is also badly placed – I found that to operate it I either have to take my right hand off the camera and reach in from above, or somehow slide my thumb behind the camera, which usually results in both adjusted exposure and smeared glasses! No such problem with the G9 – you can quickly set up the camera so that the rear wheel, under the right thumb, controls the primary exposure value (aperture or shutter speed as appropriate), while the front wheel, easily in reach of the shutter finger, controls compensation. Vice-versa if you prefer. Perfect.

Unfortunately, however, Panasonic have perpetuated, and even aggravated one of the GX8’s other ergonomic failings, and arguably introduced a new one! The perpetual horror is focus mode. The G9, like most of the G series, has four main modes: manual focus (’nuff said), autofocus "single" (half press the shutter button to focus, then full press to expose with that focus), "follow" (another single shot mode, but if the primary subject moves while the shutter button is half pressed, the camera refocuses), and "continuous" (aligned to the high-speed shooting modes, refocuses for each exposure). The ideal solution would be a button which toggles between the modes. That’s good enough for a lot of very good cameras. However the G9 has a switch.

If you must have a switch, then surely it should have four modes? Nope. You select manual, continuous or single/follow on a three position switch, then have to dive into the menus to choose between single and follow, or the several variants of continuous. To add insult to injury, at least in the GX8 you could set the button in the middle of the focus switch to toggle between single and follow. Not on the G9, at least not with its initial firmware – this is set to AE/AF lock (which I personally never, ever use) and not programmable. The obvious fix is to make that button programmable so that when in the single/follow position it toggles between the two, when in the continuous position it toggles between the various variants of that mode, and when in the manual position it does something equivalently useful like turning focus peaking (highlighting) on and off. This could be fixed in a firmware update – I will just have to write to Panasonic and cross my fingers.

The other fixed switch on the G9 is for the drive mode (single, high speed, timer etc.) On the GX8 this is on a button, which is much better as you can include infrequent or situation-specific settings (like high speed mode) in appropriate custom shooting modes, and just leave the main aperture-priority settings or equivalent on single-shot, with a much reduced risk of going to take a shot and being in the wrong mode. The G9 arrangement seems like a retrograde step, but liveable.

Strengths

Krzysztof Radzikowski sets a new world record with a 150kg dumbell lift

That brings us from some arguable weaknesses of the G9 onto its real strengths. It’s fast – so fast it has three high-speed modes: high (about 5FPS), super-high 1 (about 15FPS) and super-high 2 (about 20FPS). The two super-high modes also have a very useful feature for sports and wildlife photography: hold the shutter half pressed and they will continuously store a few frames (about 0.4s worth) in the buffer, and write these to the card when you press the shutter, so if you are fractionally late clicking, you don’t lose the event. The downside is that you need to use the super-high settings with caution: if you are saving RAW + large JPEG files super-high 2 will chew up your memory cards at roughly 1GByte every 1.5 seconds. Another reason why I’d prefer to lock this to a custom mode!

Autofocus is much improved over the GX8, although I have to admit that my first sporting event with the new camera didn’t give it that much of a workout: in absolute terms, strongmen don’t move fast. it’s impressive to see a 150kg (330lb) man jogging with the same weight in each hand, but it’s not the harshest test of autofocus! However I can report that the G9 seems to adjust focus very quickly in continuous mode and seems to have missed relatively few shots. If there’s any pattern to the misses they tend to be the first shots of longer sequences, when I may have been moving the camera into position on the action. I’ll have to try and find something involving horses or fast cars for a better check.

Sensor readout also appears to have been improved, with a bit less banding on pictures of LED displays, and no obvious rolling shutter effects so far, although a higher-speed subject will really be required to confirm that.

The other area where Panasonic seem to have listened to my prior pleas is in support for bracketed and multi-shot images. In addition to the established support for exposure bracketing (for HDR), the new camera now does focus bracketing/scanning, as well as bracketing for aperture and white balance. Intelligently, even in single-shot drive mode you can choose to have the bracket shot at high speed to minimise the effect of subject or camera movement. The focus bracketing capability is something I have been seeking for a long time, and records full RAW files, a completely separate capability from the camera’s other ability to do in-camera focus stacking or post-shot focus selection from within a 6K movie file. Bracketed photos are clearly marked in their metadata, which makes it quite easy to build a script to sort them out from the rest of a day’s shooting.

Battery life is excellent – at the aforementioned strongman competition the camera was on for most of the five hours of competition and took about 600 shots. It used one battery and was about 30% into the second, much better than the GX8 would manage. I can also confirm that the two card slot arrangement works fine, effectively doubling the memory capacity, so I wasn’t fiddling with cards.

Two other ergonomic points are worth making. The rear display can be manually set to a nice bright setting for outdoors, but it’s automatic setting is far too dim. The EVF is large, detailed and bright, but as adjusted for my glasses has an odd pincushion distortion, with noticeably curved edges. This is nothing to do with the lens, which the camera corrects as required, but the way the EVF display is presented to the eyepiece. It’s not a major problem, but annoying to an inveterate picture-straightener like myself, especially as I haven’t had that problem with any of the predecessors.

Otherwise it’s pretty much business as usual. Image quality appears to be just the same as the GX8, much as expected given the common sensor, and the camera has a nicely familiar feel even if some of the controls are different and it’s definitely a bit heavier. Stabilisation is at least as good as the predecessor, with no noticeable penalty from the increased weight, but it’s clear that the full multi-second goodness of "dual IS 2" will have to wait until I can afford to start replacing my lenses with the new Mark II versions.

Conclusion

Would I recommend it? If you’re a committed Panasonic user, or have no existing mirrorless camera affiliation, and you want a very high capability, stills-centric camera, then absolutely. However if video is your thing, the GH5 may be better, and if you really don’t need the high speed or new advanced stills features, then a GX-series camera will save you weight and money. This is a very good camera, but not perfect. Panasonic still have room for improvement…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2018/panasonic-g9-close-yes-cigar-no/feed/0The Decisive Momenthttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/the-decisive-moment/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/the-decisive-moment/#respondSun, 17 Dec 2017 07:59:50 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=2056Continue reading →]]>My old mum has recently moved from her house to a smaller retirement flat, and is still in the process of sorting out some of the accumulated lifetime’s possessions. On this visit, I was presented with a large carrier bag of old cameras.

I have to say, I wasn’t expecting miracles. Mum and Dad never spent a vast amount on photographic equipment, usually buying a mid-range "point and click", using it till it stopped working and then buying another.

First out, an ancient Canon Powershot, for 35mm film. It probably works, but I tried explaining to Mum that there’s no longer any real market for such items.

"No-one really wants the bother of getting films developed. You don’t – you have a digital camera yourself now, you were using it last night."

"But surely there are people who love old cameras."

"Yes there are, but they have to be a bit special. If this was a Leica, with a little red dot on it, it would probably be worth some money, but not an ancient cheap Canon."

To settle it, I opened up my laptop and had a look on eBay. There were a couple, for about £15 and about £12, both with no bids.

Next up, a similar Panasonic. This still had a film in it, which was suspicious as it probably meant that the camera had died mid-holiday and been abandoned. eBay suggested an asking price somewhere in the range £8 to £11.99. Getting worse.

"I could offer it to the charity shop" said Mum, hopefully.

"Well you could, but don’t be surprised if they are underwhelmed." I told her about my recent experience of having a perfectly good 32" flatscreen TV rejected by our local charity shop, which didn’t encourage her.

"But surely if things still work?"

"I keep on saying, Mum, things have to be a bit special. You know, a Leica or something, with a nice red dot."

Next out of the bag was a Konica. This was a slightly different shape and had the rather ominous indicator "110" in the model number. That’s definitely not a good sign, I mean can you actually still get and process 110 film? (That’s assuming that you can see any point in shooting a format which is distinctly inferior to 35mm in the first place.) Amazingly enough there is one on eBay. £2.99, no bids…

"OK", says Mum, deciding that there’s no point in arguing that one. "There’s one box left in the bag."

What? Hoist by my own petard! I mean, what were the chances??

Sadly it’s actually only a slide box, and eBay suggests that it’s going to get £20 at best, but I am now honour-bound to do my best to find it a good home.

Be careful what you wish for…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/the-decisive-moment/feed/0A "False Colour" Experimenthttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/a-false-colour-experiment/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/a-false-colour-experiment/#respondThu, 06 Jul 2017 10:48:41 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=2013Continue reading →]]>This is a bit of an experiment, but I think it works. I started with an infrared image in its standard form: yellow skies and blue foliage. I then performed a series of fairly simple colour replacement operations in Photoshop Elements: yellow to red, blue in top half of image to dark green, blue in bottom half of image to pale green, red to blue. The result is a bit like a hand-coloured black and white image. I like it, do you?
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/a-false-colour-experiment/feed/0Infrared White Balancehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/infrared-white-balance/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/infrared-white-balance/#respondThu, 06 Jul 2017 09:39:53 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=2010Continue reading →]]>"I’m shooting infrared. My main output is RAW files, and any JPGs are just aides memoire. Between my raw processor and Photoshop I’m going to do some fancy channel mixing to either add false colour, or take it away entirely and generate a monochrome image. So I’m assuming my white balance doesn’t matter. Is that right?"

Nope, and this article explains why. If you’re struggling with, or puzzled by, the role of white balance in infrared photography, hopefully this will help untangle things.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/infrared-white-balance/feed/03D Photos from Myanmarhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/3d-photos-from-myanmar/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/3d-photos-from-myanmar/#respondSat, 11 Mar 2017 08:21:45 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1996Continue reading →]]>I’ve just finished processing my 3D shots from Myanmar. If you have a 3D TV or VR goggles, download a couple of the files from the following link and have a look.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/3d-photos-from-myanmar/feed/0Travel Blogging and Photo Editinghttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/travel-blogging-and-photo-editing/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/travel-blogging-and-photo-editing/#respondMon, 06 Mar 2017 11:40:33 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1990Continue reading →]]>I’ve been asked a number of times recently how I manage to write my blog during the often hectic schedule of my trips. It is sometimes a challenge, but it’s something that I want to do, and so I make it a priority for any "down time". I don’t see it as a chore, but as a way of enhancing my enjoyment, re-living the best experiences, working through any frustrations, and building valuable memories. If I’m travelling without Frances then there’s a lot of overlap with my report home, and if we’re travelling together then drafting the blog has become an enjoyable joint activity for coffee stops and dinner times.

That said, there are a few tricks to make the task manageable, and I’m happy to pass on some of those I have developed.

There’s no great magic to the writing. The main ingredient is practice. However I do spend quite a lot of time thinking through what to say about a day, trying to draft suitable paragraphs in my mind. If it was good enough for Gideon it’s good enough for me :). It is useful to capture ideas and even draft words whenever you get an opportunity, even on the go: travel time in buses and coffee stops are ideal. I just start drafting an email to myself on my phone, which can be saved at any time, reopened to add more as the day goes on, and sent before I start writing the blog.

The other important tool is a blogging app on your device which works offline and can save multiple drafts locally. I use the excellent Microsoft Live Writer on my PC, and the WordPress app on my phone and tablet, but any decent text editor would do. I would strongly counsel against trying to do travel blogging directly onto an online service – you will just be too obstructed by connectivity challenges.

Images are the other part of the equation. It’s very easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of images, especially if you shoot prolifically like I tend to do, and if you have a relatively slow processing workflow. The first trick is to shoot RAW+JPG, so you always have something which you can share and post, even if it’s not perfect. As I observed in a previous post, you don’t need perfect in this context, and it would be rare if you didn’t from a day’s shooting have a least one image good enough in camera to share.

However, as long as I have at least some time, I do try to perform a basic edit (filter) on my shots, and process at least the one or two I want to publish to my blog. That requires a robust but quick and efficient workflow. Different photographers work different ways, but the following describes mine.

Importantly, I don’t use LightRoom or the image management features in Photoshop. Neither do I use Capture One’s catalogue features. All my image management takes place directly in Windows, supported by the excellent XnView and a few tools of my own making. I find that this is both quicker, and puts me in direct control of the process, rather than at the mercy of a model which might not suit.

The first step is to copy (not move) the images off the memory card. If I have only used one card in a session, I find it perfectly adequate to just connect the camera via USB – this works quite quickly, and avoids fiddling with card readers. As long as I have sufficient cards I don’t re-format them until I’m home (just in case something happens to the PC), nor do I do much in-camera deleting, which is very cumbersome.

In terms of organisation I have a top-level directory on each laptop called "Pictures" under which is a directory called "Incoming". This is synchronised across all my computers, and holds all "work in progress". Under that I have two master directories for each year or major trip, and then subdirectories for each event. So for Myanmar I will have top level directories called "Myanmar 2017" (for output files and fully-processed originals) and "Myanmar 2017 – Incoming" (for work in progress). Under the latter I would typically have a directory for the images from each day’s shooting, e.g. "Lake Inle Day 2". On the "output" side I will typically have a directory for each location, plus one for all the originals (RAW files and Capture One settings), but I could easily also end up with others for video, and particular events or topics such as the group.

Having copied the pictures over to the right working directory, I fire up XnView. The first step is to run a batch rename process which sets each image filename to my standard, which includes the date (in YYYYMMDD format), the camera and the number assigned by the camera, so all shots from a given camera will always sort alphabetically in shot order, and I can immediately see when an image was taken and on which camera. After that I run a script which moves all "multi-shot" images into sub-directories by type (I shoot panoramas, HDR, focus blends and 3D images each using a distinct custom mode on the camera) and takes these out of the main editing workflow.

The next step is to "edit" the images, by which I mean filtering out the bad, poor, and very good. Because I have JPG files for each shot, I can set XnView to sort by file type, and quickly scan all the JPG files in full screen mode, tagging each (using shortcut keys) on the following scheme:

Two stars means "delete". This is for images which are beyond use: out of focus, blurred, subject not fully in the frame. These will be moved to the wastebasket, and once that’s emptied, they are gone forever.

Three stars means "others". This is for images which are technically viable but which I don’t think merit processing. The obvious candidates are things like alternative people shots where the expressions weren’t ideal (but I have a better shot) or where I took a few slightly different compositions and some obviously don’t work. However this is also where I park duplicates or the unwanted frames from high-speed sequences. When I get home the JPGs will be deleted and the RAW files moved to an old external hard drive to free up disk space.

Four stars means "OK". This is for technically and compositionally adequate images, albeit which may not be the best, or may need substantial processing work.

Five stars means "good". These are the images which leap out at a quick viewing as "yes, that’s going to work".

Having tagged the images in the working folder, I have another script which deletes the two star images, moves the "others", and creates a .XMP file marking the five star images with a colour tag which can be read by Capture One. I can also copy the in-camera JPG versions of the 5 star images as a starting point for my portfolio, although these will be replaced by processed versions later.

The thing about the tagging process is to keep going, quickly, but err on the side of caution (so tag borderline delete as 3 star, and borderline others as 4 star). I can usually work through at an image every one or two seconds, so the first filter of an intensive shoot of 500 images takes less than 20 minutes. At this point I have typically reduced the retained images by 40-60%, but that varies by subject matter and the percentage of rejects can be much higher for challenging subjects such as high-speed action but also people other than professional models, where a lot get rejected for poor expressions. The reason I’ve chosen the image at the top is that I love trying to capture hands at work, but that’s another subject with a high "miss" rate. I also find that I fairly consistently mark about 4-5% of shots as 5 star.

I don’t just delete the "others", because there is the occasional case where my selected shot of a group turns out to have a major flaw, and it’s worth reviewing the options. More importantly, for family events, weddings and the like there’s the occasional "didn’t anyone take a picture of Aunty Ethel?" I rescued a friend of mine from a serious family bust-up when it emerged that the official photographer at his wedding hadn’t taken a single photo of my friend, the groom’s parents! On the case, I found a shot in "others" which after processing kept everyone happy.

At this point, and only then, I start up Capture One and navigate to the target working directory. It takes a minute or two to perform its first scan, and then I can change the sort order to "colour tag", and there are the best of the day’s images, right at the top of the list ready to select a couple for the blog and process them. 90% of the time I restrict processing changes to the crop and exposure (levels and curves) – I wouldn’t usually select for the blog any image needing more than that. Finish the words, and I’m ready to post my blog.

From plugging in the camera to posting typically takes around an hour. There’s some scope for multi-tasking, so I can work on the words (or get a cup of tea) while the images are downloading from the camera, or while posting the images to my website (which in my case is a separate step from posting the blog). As a by-product, I have performed my first edit on the shoot, and have more or less the best images prioritised for further processing.

And I have an enduring and sharable record of what I did on my holidays!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/travel-blogging-and-photo-editing/feed/0Myanmar Musings (What Worked and What Didn’t)http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/myanmar-musings-what-worked-and-what-didnt/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/myanmar-musings-what-worked-and-what-didnt/#respondThu, 23 Feb 2017 14:02:00 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1982Continue reading →]]>Well, I’m back! Apart from a mad dash the length of Bangkok airport which got us to our plane to the UK with only a couple of minutes to spare, the flights home were uneventful and timely. Here’s my traditional tail-end blog piece, with a combination of “what worked and what didn’t” and more general musings.

This was a truly inspiring photographic trip, with a combination of great locations, events and people to photograph. We had a very capable “leadership team” who got us to great locations in great light, and the Burmese people were only too happy to participate in the process. No praise can be too high for our local guide, Nay Win Oo (Shine), who is not only a great guide and competent logistician, but has a good feel for what makes great photography, and a real talent for directing the local people as models.

If I have a minor complaint, it’s the observation that the trip was largely focused on interiors and people to the occasional exclusion of landscapes and architecture. I had to declare UDI a couple of times to get a bit more of the latter subject matter in front of my lens. Bhutan was perhaps a better match to my own style, but that didn’t stop this trip being a great source of images.

Cameras and Shot Count

The Panasonic GX8 was the workhorse of the trip, and took approximately 3690 exposures. That’s about 20% higher than either Bhutan or Morocco, both of which were slightly longer trips, and reflects the more “interactive” nature of the photography, with a rather higher discard ratio than normal. As usual the total also includes raw material for quite a lot of multi-exposure images, mainly for 3D and panoramas. I expect to end up with 100-200 images worth sharing, which is about the norm.

I took around 84 stills on the Sony RX100, mainly “grab shots” from the bus, but it came into its own for video, and I have a number of great video clips, more than on previous trips. I also took a handful of images using the infrared-converted Panasonic GX7, but whether due to the subject matter or the lighting they weren’t terribly inspiring.

I used my Ricoh Theta 360-degree camera several times, mainly in the markets and at the group mealtimes. I’m treating this as “found photography” – I haven’t had much of a look yet at what was captured, and will look forward to exploring the output over time.

My equipment all behaved faultlessly. I used all the lenses a reasonable amount, with the Panasonic 12-35mm doing the lion’s share as expected, but the 7-14mm, 35-100mm and 100-300mm all getting substantial use. I didn’t use the camera on my new Sony Experia Ultra phone, but its excellent GPS was a vast improvement over the Galaxy Note’s poor performance in Bhutan.

I also did not use the Panasonic GX7 which I was carrying as a spare, but was able to lend it as a complete solution to another member of the group when her Canon L Series zoom lens started misbehaving. Having been burned previously I always carry a spare everything, and that’s a lot easier with the diminutive Panasonic kit.

Human Factors

While technology was broadly reliable, human systems were more challenged. The combined effects of the intensive schedule and the expected risk of tummy bugs led to as fairly high attrition rate. At least half the group missed a shoot or a meal, and a couple were quite ill for a couple of days. I was lucky that my own “wobble” was brief and started within a quick walk of a five star hotel. I would advise most travellers to think in terms of “when” not “if”, and definitely avoid all uncooked food.

Hotels and restaurants were clean, and even out and about most washrooms were acceptable. Similarly temple areas were kept clean, with the fact that all shoes are removed at the entrance a clear contributor. The challenge is in the more general areas, especially in the towns and cities, where any surface you touch may also have been touched by many others. Money is a particular challenge. All you can do is to keep sanitising your hands, but also bags, cameras, wallets and other items which you may have to touch with dirty hands.

Our Burmese travel agents certainly did everything they could to reduce stress. Once we arrived in Burma responsibility for our large luggage and travel documents began and ended with putting our bags outside the room at the appointed time. Then we just got on the bus, walked through the airport picking up a boarding pass as we passed Shine, and that’s about it! I could get used to travelling that way…

With someone else doing the “heavy lifting” (quite literally in the case of my case), you can get around with two phrases and 3 gestures:

Minga-la-ba, which is a polite “good day” exchanged between any two people who make eye contact. The choruses in the school and markets were fascinating! This can be used to cover a multitude of sins, and works very well as “please can I take your photograph?”

Che-su-ba, which means “thank you”. ‘Nuff said.

The smiley face and thumbs up, which work when you’re not close enough to use Minga-la-ba and che-su-ba.

A gesture consisting of the left hand held out at table level, palm up, with the right hand held about a foot above it, palm down. This is universally interpreted as “I would like a large Myanman beer, please”

Burmese Bizarre

Myanmar is a bit bizarre in a number of ways. Let’s start with the name. Myanmar (pronounce “mee…” not “my…”) is a relatively recent invention, and is not universally adopted. It doesn’t help that Aung San Suu Kyi (the popular and de-facto leader) tends to use “Burma” herself, and there’s no common adjective derived from Myanmar, whereas “Burmese” works, and is officially valid if it relates to the dominant ethnic group and language. It wouldn’t surprise me if “Myanmar” goes the way of “Zaire” and “Tanganyika”, and we’re all back to “Burma” in a few years.

The Burmese really do “drive on the wrong side of the road”. In another anti-colonial dictat a few years ago, one of the madder generals decided to change from the British practice, and instructed the country to drive on the right. On it’s own, that’s not a problem. It works fairly well for the Americas and most of Europe. However the Burmese are trying to do it with the same almost completely right-hand-drive vehicle supply as the rest of Asia and Australasia. So all of the drivers are unable to see round corners or larger vehicles in front, and every bus has a “driver’s assistant” who’s main job is to stop passengers being mown down by passing traffic as they disembark into the middle of the road!

At a daily level Myanmar is almost entirely cash-based, with effectively three currencies in circulation. Major tourist transactions are conducted in US Dollars. These must be large denominations and absolutely pristine – they may be rejected for a tiny mark or fold. Next down, most day to day transactions by tourists and the more wealthy are conducted in Kyat (pronounced “Chat”), in round units of 1000 Kyat (about 60p). 10,000K and 5,000K notes tend to also be quite tidy. Transactions with and between the poorer people are in tens or hundreds of Kyat and the money is quite different. It’s absolutely disgusting, clearly and literally passing through a lot of hands in its lifetime. It’s all slightly reminiscent of the two currency system in Cuba, but with one currency used two distinct ways.

Uniquely among the countries I have visited, Myanmar has no international GSM roaming. However we had good straightforward Wifi connectivity at reasonable speeds and without any obvious restrictions at all the hotels and in several other locations. I suspect this is a transitional state, as the enthusiastic adoption of mobile phones in the local population will inevitably drive a standard solution fairly rapidly.

One thing which did amuse me – one of the primary providers of Internet services is a company called SkyNet. Shine say’s they’ve all seen the films, so I’m assuming the founder is a Terminator fan…

The usual Asian approach of throwing people at any problem showed mixed results. Bangkok Airport is an enormous hub trying to run on small site processes which don’t scale just by adding people. The role of “bus driver’s assistant” does find employment for young lads with a helpful attitude but few exams. However we did have one very delayed meal where the problem seemed to be one of short staffing, despite a lot of people milling around the restaurant with nothing to do, most of the order taking, cooking and serving was being done by one or two individuals who were run ragged. It will be interesting to see how the approaches vary as the economy grows.

Guide books describe the food as “a rich fusion of unusual flavours” and “a repertoire of ingredients not found in any other cuisine”. Yeah, right. I’ll admit that I was being a bit cautious and avoided some of the more unusual fish and hot curry dishes, but basically it was Chinese or Thai food with a few local variations (more pineapple), alongside a number of Indian, Italian and Anglo-American favourites. One member of our group survived almost the whole trip on chicken and cashew nuts, and I’ll admit to a couple of pizzas!

To Sum Up

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/myanmar-musings-what-worked-and-what-didnt/feed/0Enlightenmenthttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/enlightenment/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/enlightenment/#respondWed, 01 Feb 2017 07:02:07 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1925Continue reading →]]>I have to confess, this post is a conflation of two fairly separate topics, and I struggled to find a common theme, but I think I’ve just about pulled it off. Apologies if you disagree.

I’m just working through some photos I took last year, including a trip to Greenwich. When I first started using the latest generation of Panasonic cameras and Capture One software, I publicly questioned whether we still needed HDR techniques. The answer, I have discovered, is still very much "yes", but maybe only in more extreme circumstances than in earlier years. The dynamic range between the day-lit buildings outside the Painted Hall, the splashes of direct sunlight inside, and the dark shadows away from that direct lighting was considerable, and no single image could cover them. To process this I took a series of images covering a 4 stop base range, and then applied Capture One’s highlight and shadow correction to them, squeezing probably another two stops in each direction, before feeding into Photomatix to merge into one. I’m pleased with the result, and happy that it justifies keeping those tools in my software "kit".

This post is also a bit of a test of another returning technical capability. I very much mourned the passing of Google Currents in 2012. If you don’t remember, this was a beautiful news and feed reader with two key capabilities: offline working, and presenting the headlines of available stories as a mix of text and highlighted images, in the idiom of a paper magazine. However, Google killed it off in favour of the brain-dead "News-stand" app which has neither of these features. At the time I struggled to find a replacement. Feedly offers roughly equivalent feed management capabilities and equally pretty content presentation, but it doesn’t work offline, which is a key capability for me, as I often catch up on news in low-connectivity environments. The available independent off-line readers were not a great bunch, but I settled on Press, which handled content caching very well but was never very inspiring in terms of the presentation of content, or its reading environment. For reasons I haven’t ascertained, it recently stopped displaying the headline images from my own feed, which is rather annoying.

I have occasionally tried to find a more complete replacement for Currents, and last night, 5 years on, I may finally have found one. It’s called Paperboy, and it may do the trick. Like Press, it runs on top of Feedly to allow common feed management across multiple apps, and it looks like it has similar offline capabilities, but the display and reading environment is much more like the lamented Currents. However, I need to check how it handles my own feed, and that means making sure I have a new post. So that’s the other purpose of this item.

I’ll let you know how it works.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/enlightenment/feed/0A "Found" Quadtychhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/a-found-quadtych/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/a-found-quadtych/#respondFri, 06 Jan 2017 08:01:04 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1913Continue reading →]]>The blog has been looking a bit light on pictures recently. Meanwhile I’m beavering away trying to finish tidying up the Bhutan pics before I’m off to Burma in February. This morning I discovered a series of four similar close-ups on supporting "gargoyles" (I suspect that’s not quite the right term in the Bhutanese context, but close enough) which I never originally envisaged as a multi-shot combination, but which I think actually work quite well as a "quadtych" (which is exactly the right term, apparently).
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2017/a-found-quadtych/feed/0A Splash of Colourhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/a-splash-of-colour/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/a-splash-of-colour/#respondWed, 07 Dec 2016 06:59:10 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1899Continue reading →]]>No deep philosophical observations today, but with the weather swinging between cold and misty, and mild and murky, I thought it would be nice to brighten things up a bit. I’m working through the remaining shots from Bhutan, before another planned trip in the New Year, and this shot from our arrival on the first day cheered me up a bit. I hope it also works for you.
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/a-splash-of-colour/feed/0Night-Time Photography with the Sony RX100 Mk IVhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/night-time-photography-with-the-sony-rx100-mk-iv/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/night-time-photography-with-the-sony-rx100-mk-iv/#respondWed, 30 Nov 2016 15:59:41 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1895Continue reading →]]>Last night was crisp, clear, cold and very still – theoretically ideal conditions for photographing the lights at Albert Dock with reflections in the water. I couldn’t get out any earlier, but did manage to take my Sony RX100 with me on the way to a dinner meeting.

Unfortunately I was well past "blue hour" so there was no light whatsoever in the sky or its reflection. This presented a bit of a problem, in that it’s a real challenge to a camera’s dynamic range, and the tendency is to over-expose the highlights (lights). The RX100 also insisted in the longer views in defaulting to ISO 6400 (because of the low overall light levels), and in the cold I didn’t have the patience to fix this properly.

The result is that the best shots were those with a reasonable level of foreground light, like the one above. The image quality is excellent, as is the control of the highlights, especially considering it was taken on a small sensor camera in what would be low light by most standards. However I did have success with a couple of longer shots, typically where there was an illuminated building to lift the overall luminosity. The one below is a decent example.

The moral of the tale – try and get out a bit earlier, and set the auto-ISO limit a bit lower!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/night-time-photography-with-the-sony-rx100-mk-iv/feed/0Taking the All-Round Viewhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/taking-the-all-round-view/
Thu, 24 Nov 2016 07:02:23 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1873Continue reading →]]>Apologies if it’s been a bit quiet here recently, but I’ve been submerged under a tidal wave of new (to me) technologies, and it hasn’t left much space in this bear’s brain for blogging. In the last month or so I’ve had to get my head around OpenLDAP, C#, Java development (OK, I’ve done that before, but not for about 8 years), microservices, Java Server Faces, Primefaces, and that’s just for one client. The other’s been a bit quiet, but even there I’ve had to outline and prove the concept of how to interface with an external expert systems framework.

However, that hasn’t stopped me “investing” in a few new toys. After the Cornwall trip I decided that with my changing eyesight I needed an infrared camera with an electronic viewfinder, and commissioned the guy in the USA who supplied the Panasonic GF3 to source and convert a GX7. Setting aside a nearly two-week delay through customs, mainly due to ParcelForce insisting on sending the charge note by second-class post (grr…), this turned up very promptly and works beautifully. It does appear to be a bit more fussy than the GF3 regarding whether autofocus will work in low-contrast scenes, but as I’m not likely to be using it to capture fast-moving action that’s not a major issue.

More recently, I’ve also plumped for a 360 degree camera, the Ricoh Theta S. This is a fun little gadget about the size of a small chocolate bar, with a lens on each side, and takes a 360 degree panorama in a single click of the button. It will do both video and stills, but the latter is probably more immediately interesting from my viewpoint.

There are some interesting dynamics to using this device. Firstly, it’s a return to much more of a “click and wait” process, on a shorter timescale than but otherwise not dissimilar to film photography. You can use it tethered to a phone or tablet, but a much more natural way to use it is to look for an interesting scene, hold it above your head and click, then look later at what you captured. This requires a discipline of “pre-visualisation” as Ansel Adams called it, but with the variation that you can’t just focus on what’s in front of you, but also need to be aware of what’s behind, above and below as well. A line of subjects on the horizon won’t produce a very good 360 panorama if you have an ugly or boring sky, ground or scene behind you. My usual policy of “getting high” may work fairly well, although that will produce images with much of the interest below the horizon line.

On the other hand, you do get a fascinating opportunity for what I call “post exploration”. Having downloaded the images, you can explore round them, looking at details which were invisible to you at the point of clicking, and trying to find a perspective which makes an interesting shareable static image. I’m becoming quite fascinated by the “small world” perspectives like the above, but there’s a lot of scope to go back to a favourite image and explore it again.

This process does also mean that I’ve had to join the selfie culture. At best, there are going to be a lot of shots of my thumb and the top of my bald head. However there’s a temptation to hold the camera lower and include yours truly in shot, so you have been warned

Editing is a bit tricky, as so far I haven’t found very good tools for the PC. There are reasonable tools for the tablet, which provides a fast and flexible way to view and explore the image, but the two-way export process if you want to return a cropped image (like the one above) to the PC is a bit fiddly. My search continues.

I went for the Ricoh Theta S, a slightly more expensive option, as reviews promised better image quality. It’s not bad, but like most small-sensor point and shoots there’s not much dynamic range, and so far I’m getting a lot of shots with blown highlights and muddy shadows. If there was ever a device which would benefit from in-camera HDR then this is it. There may also be some settings to explore, but given the very simple user interface I don’t hold out much hope in that direction. If I really get into this I’ll just have to find a grand for a Panono…

If you’re viewing this on a phone or tablet, have a go at exploring round the following by sliding and twisting (I haven’t worked out how to enable pinch to zoom, but I’m working on it.) Please let me know what you think.

]]>Taking the Long Viewhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/taking-the-long-view/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/taking-the-long-view/#respondWed, 12 Oct 2016 16:13:00 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1866Continue reading →]]>I’m aware that I’m a slightly lazy photographer. I’m not a great one for pre-dawn starts or rushing out the minute the weather changes, and I do tend to walk around with a single zoom lens on my camera making the scene fit the lens rather than rushing to change it every shot. The other thing which can happen is I get "stuck" seeing lots of shots with a similar dynamic, rather than looking for variations.

On our recent trip to Cornwall, I kept on seeing potential panoramas, and made lots of them. A few, like this one, I’m quite pleased with, although others were middling. I took almost no 3D shots. A week later I was in Winkworth Arboretum, and I could only see potential 3D shots, almost nothing else.

This may not be a problem. There are plenty of people who focus their photography on a single subject and style, and try to become the real experts in that, like that German couple (Bernd and Hilla Becher) who just took low-contrast photos of water towers. However I do try to be more diverse, but don’t always succeed. I’m not sure what the cure is, or even whether a cure is strictly necessary. If I’m working on a more formal basis a shot list can help, but I think mainly I just need to spend more time shooting and training my eye to see the shots. Here goes…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/taking-the-long-view/feed/0A Bit Stretched!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/a-bit-stretched/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/a-bit-stretched/#respondSat, 30 Jul 2016 06:11:59 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1829Continue reading →]]>Apologies if there hasn’t been much activity on the blog lately. I’m deep into the invention of the expert system I wrote about previously, and that’s filling the relatively small brain of this bear, and not leaving much space for other creative activities. However, I am gently working on a couple of longer articles I hope to share with you soon.

Meanwhile, I am working here and there to catch up on the photographic backlog. Frances and I had a couple of days in Prague about a month ago, and predictably I took a fair few photographs. What was interesting was the dynamic of the type of shots: I did relatively little close-up or 3D photography, but the opportunity to generate big panoramas positively abounds, especially if, as I did, you get up to the top of several of the towers open to the public. I’ve recently switched my panoramic development to Kolor’s Autopano Giga, which coupled with Capture One makes the whole process very quick and painless, effortlessly adjusting and stitching even images taken with a moving camera (moving from the waist, rather than rotating the camera around its optical centre as per correct technique), and those requiring substantial perspective correction.

The attached was taken from a point where the main entrance of the opera house filled the frame, and the two sides stretched away from me down two streets orthogonal to each other. It was also taken late at night, hand-held by available light but the Panasonic GX8 has made a decent job of managing highlights even if the sky does fall away to black. I think it works.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/a-bit-stretched/feed/0Creating 3D Images for On-Screen Displayhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/3d-photography/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/3d-photography/#respondMon, 18 Apr 2016 10:21:51 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1810Continue reading →]]>There’s a significant dearth of information on the internet regarding how to create high-resolution 3D images for display on a suitable TV. While many of us regularly enjoy watching visually stunning 3D movies both in cinemas and also on television, if you try and research creating your own 3D images you are led either into the highly technical space of professional production, or at the other extreme you end up reading a lot of rubbish about squinting at pairs of postage-stamp images to "try and get a 3D effect".

While I don’t want to be unkind, the latter is completely out of touch with our target environment, a 3D-enabled large screen television. Such devices are now relatively common, and there ought to be a recognised process for creating suitable images for them. As it turns out, it’s perfectly possible and relatively easy to create stunning 3D images which will display at the full resolution of the target television. With a little discipline and practice you can do so reliably with any camera, and even hand-held.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/3d-photography/feed/0Does a Photograph Portray the Subject, or the Photographer?http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/does-a-photograph-portray-the-subject-or-the-photographer/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/does-a-photograph-portray-the-subject-or-the-photographer/#respondMon, 28 Mar 2016 07:45:16 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1796Continue reading →]]>Mike Johnston (no relation) over at The Online Photographer has recently run a number of articles discussing the extent to which the photographer adjusts the “look” of a photograph (see What Should a Photo Look Like?) His primary examples were a set from a recent New York Times online photo essay, Cuba on the Edge of Change.

While it’s a fine article, the photos, with one slight exception showing a bride on the way to her wedding, all portray a dark, crumbling, slightly grim Cuba. The following is a good example:

Image from New York Times, photographer not identified

There’s nothing wrong with this photo. Some might say it’s a very good image. However it has been deliberately selected, as have all the others in the article, to show and reinforce the image of a struggling, poor, backward Cuba which is the common American image of the country. The low-key lighting is part of this “story”, and the look of the photos has been adjusted to enhance that.

I went to Cuba in 2010. Yes, I saw decay, old buildings which had not been well repaired, and I certainly saw poverty. I did see a few, not many, people surviving by begging. But that’s not my enduring memory of the country, and doesn’t fill the best of my images. I saw a country full of happy, reasonably healthy and well fed people who were managing to stay cheerful in a difficult economic situation. My pictures are full of smiles, kids running around, and, yes, lots of bright colours and a high key look. That reflected the Cuba I wanted to portray.

The picture at the top more accurately portrays the Cuba I saw than the NYT one, but I’m a positive sort of chap, and I was on a very enjoyable holiday. I don’t know whether the NYT journalist and photographer (or photographers, it’s not clear) had had a worse experience, or were just trying to illustrate a narrative that was already in their minds, but I’m willing to bet the latter.

So to my mind the question is not “what sort of look do you want in your photos”? Your photos will reflect a composite of the subject, true, but also the photographer’s own outlook. Inevitably the photographs will be both taken and prepared coloured with the effects of that outlook just as much as, maybe even more than, the original beams of light.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/does-a-photograph-portray-the-subject-or-the-photographer/feed/0My Travel Pagehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/my-travel-page/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/my-travel-page/#respondThu, 10 Mar 2016 16:03:48 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1791Continue reading →]]>Some things don’t scale. You start off doing something, but before you know it it’s outgrown its usefulness and needs to change. So it is with website design…

I started off with lists in a couple of places on this site of blogs or albums related to trips I’ve done. However as the list has grown they were getting a bit unwieldy and out of step with one another. I have therefore practiced what I preach, and "re-factored" them to a new "index" page, at www.andrewj.com/travel

Take a look, and let me know what you think.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/my-travel-page/feed/0Camera History Updatehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/camera-history-update/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/camera-history-update/#respondTue, 16 Feb 2016 06:51:23 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1781Continue reading →]]>As part of a general tidy-up, I’ve updated my camera history page, with a new photo of the "fleet". It may amuse you, especially as the count has crept back up again! "Photography" is a combination of many separate hobbies, and I’m definitely engaged in the "buying and selling cameras" sub-division.
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/camera-history-update/feed/0Backing Uphttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/backing-up/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/backing-up/#respondThu, 04 Feb 2016 07:11:23 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1777Continue reading →]]>Coming up with a reliable backup policy is a challenge as data volumes grow. My approach is as follows. On a weekly basis I do a full backup of the system disk of the more "volatile" PCs in our collection, plus a differential backup of the other disks. The best tool for full backups appears to be Acronis, but it has a brain-dead approach to partial backups, which cannot always be restored if you don’t have every file in the chain, and it’s just not reliable enough. I therefore also continue to use the venerable Windows ntbackup, even under Windows 10, as I still haven’t found a better option which supports a true "differential" model.

Every three or four months I then do a full backup of every disk in every PC, and re-set the baseline for the differential backups. That’s due for this weekend, and as a result I’m trying to finish processing images from some previous trips, so they will be fully backed up in their complete form. I have about 100 images from Santorini to process today, and then I get to a very neat breakpoint. I’m not sure whether such a deadline really helps, but at least it drives me to keep my photography backlog under control.

The picture above is mainly just to provide a bit of colourful cheer on a damp and windy February morning. Enjoy it!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/backing-up/feed/0Snap!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/snap/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/snap/#respondThu, 28 Jan 2016 06:29:17 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1774Continue reading →]]>As you know, I enjoy looking for patterns and coincidences. One potential source is the various ways I display my photo portfolios, and I occasionally spot the screensavers on two devices, for example, showing related images. This is interesting, but essentially fleeting – a moment to be enjoyed before the randomisers roll on.

However, last night I spotted one which I not only could, but thought I should share. On one page of my Android tablet I display two randomly selected images, and when I flicked through it I spotted this combination. The top image is from Antelope Canyon in Arizona, the bottom is a shepherdess in Morocco. Not only are the colour palettes almost identical, but in some ways the woman’s body position echoes the curves of the rock. Intriguing.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/snap/feed/0An Open Letter to Panasonichttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/an-open-letter-to-panasonic/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/an-open-letter-to-panasonic/#respondThu, 07 Jan 2016 16:58:41 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1766Continue reading →]]>I was recently invited to provide some feedback to Panasonic on the design of the GX8, and thoughts for its successor. I’ve decided to draft this in the form of an open letter, and also post it on my blog. Apologies to regular readers who may have seen much of this before – please feel free to move on…

It’s probably worth setting out my credentials here. I have been a fairly regular user and purchaser of Panasonic electronics since I bought my first Technics hi-fi back in about 1979. In 2012 I was looking for a smaller option than my large Canon cameras and lenses. I had a look at the Olympus OM-D series, but realised from a quick handling test that I much preferred the Panasonic GH2. In use I found I liked not only the lightweight, tiny package, but was impressed by image quality which easily bettered that of the Canon 7D (using Capture One with both cameras). Since then things have moved on with two generations of Panasonic upgrades, and I currently have a GX8 as primary camera, with a GX7 as back-up, an infrared-adapted GF3, and a GF6 for which I have a third party underwater housing. In the meantime I have owned and sold both a GH2 and GH4, and I tried but didn’t get on with the GM5. In terms of lenses I have the two F2.8 zooms, the 100-300mm, the diminutive 45-175mm, the 3D lens and a couple of copies of the tiny 14-42mm power zoom. For balance I also have an Olympus 9-18mm zoom rounding out the wide end of the zoom range, and my compact cameras are from other manufacturers, a Sony RX100mk4 and a Canon S120.

I write this having used the GX8 as main camera on a recent photo tour of Bhutan. I think that makes me quite qualified to comment on the cameras’ capabilities.

Up front I’d like to record that my other comments notwithstanding, the GX8 is a great camera. It’s fast and produces great image quality. Its viewfinder is large and bright (although I have to acknowledge that the Fuji XT1 is even nicer). Handling is good, but not perfect, and the first area for potential improvement…

Ergonomics

Size-wise, the GX8 is pretty much perfect. I’m a European male of fairly average size, and "naked" the GX7 is just a bit too small for me. I’ve always used it with the bottom half of the "ever ready" case, which improves the fit to my hands no end. The GX8 is almost exactly the size of that combination. However it would be a mistake for the successor to grow again.

Beyond that, I have one major complaint about the GX8’s ergonomics, and a couple of minor ones.

The major complaint regards the dedicated exposure dial, which should go, for three separate reasons:

It’s ergonomically clumsy compared with its predecessors. Like many users of better digital cameras, my usual approach is to select an appropriate base exposure mode (e.g. aperture-priority for static or slow-moving subjects) and primary setting (e.g. f/8), see what the camera’s auto-exposure does with it, and dial in exposure compensation to suit. Ideally I do this with the viewfinder to my eye, without moving the camera from the scene. The GX7 and GH4 have controls perfectly positioned to do this: the index finger can easily adjust the primary exposure control, and the thumb can easily adjust compensation via the rear dial. The right hand remains positioned ready to shoot at the decisive moment. The left hand supports the camera and works the lens, but the right remains in primary control of composition. On the GX8 you have to take the right hand off the primary controls and reach in towards your eye to fiddle with the compensation dial, during which time you can lose position, or even a shot. That has happened to me.

It doesn’t work visually for older users. Users aged 50+ (the ones who buy a lot of expensive camera gear and take it on expensive trips) often have to fiddle with glasses to move between viewing stuff at a distance (e.g. a typical scene) and close up (e.g. buttons on cameras). In my own case the markings on the exposure dial are almost invisible glasses-on. For such users it’s a much better model just to have a continuous control, and feed back values through the EVF, just like you do for most other settings.

It breaks the custom settings model. If you have a non-zero value set on this, that over-rides any value you may have programmed into custom settings. The custom settings should be able to control as much of the camera settings as possible.

A return to the GX7’s design would be much appreciated.

Some of the same concerns also apply to the focus mode control. Again, it breaks the custom settings model (so that, for example, I can have a custom mode for "high speed action" but then have to remember to manually set AFS/AFF, and turn it off afterwards). Again it requires focusing the eyes on the camera instead of the scene, which may mean fiddling with glasses for older users, although personally I find the graphics on it are large enough that’s not such a problem as with the exposure compensation. Worst however is that it’s only half a control – you still have to set either AFS or AFF via a menu. My preference would be to replace it with a button or continuous dial which just cycles through all four focus modes. If not, please at least make the next version a four-position switch with AFS and AFF separate.

Generally I think it would make sense to have two clear, separate strategies for your two flagship cameras. The GH series have most functions on separate dedicated dials. Great for those who like that approach. The GX series should keep everything on buttons or continuous dials for those who prefer that approach. Please don’t confuse the two.

Finally, I find it too easy to accidentally press Fn7 when I’m picking up the camera. The positioning is OK, given its "DOF preview" role, but I wonder if it might be possible to give it more of a positive detent?

Electronics

The loss of the built-in flash compared with the GX7 and GH4 is an annoyance. Although I rarely use use one as I can usually rely on the high ISO capability of the new cameras, there are exceptions. In Bhutan I found myself at a cultural event where we were trying to shoot movement in very low light. Even at ISO 6400 and f/2.8 the results were unacceptable. I did have a small separate Metz flash but I couldn’t get it to work reliably. The results with the GX7’s on-camera flash might not have been ideal, but I would have got something. Please restore this in the GX9 if you can.

While the viewfinder is large and bright, it does seem to be more sensitive to white balance changes (or errors in auto white balance setting) than previous models. This means that you may see a bit of a red or brown cast on the live image in some cases, which doesn’t affect the captured RAW image but can be slightly off-putting, especially trying to use the GX8 and GX7 back to back with different lenses. If this is a deliberate change fine, but if it’s an unexpected side-effect of the viewfinder improvements it would be worth addressing.

Even though it packs a much bigger battery than the GX7 battery life is still only moderate. in Bhutan I used almost three per day on a couple of occasions, and that could have increased if we had done significant action shooting. The change in battery model is a slight inconvenience as all my other Panasonic cameras share the same model, but at least you can use the BLC12 charger for all down to the tiny battery in the GM5, which is good design.

Features

There are a number of features which are regularly requested by professional or "enthusiast" users of mid-high end cameras which I believe it would be relatively easy to implement in the GX8’s successor. Some might even be possible within firmware enhancements, although I’ve no idea how that would fit into the product life-cycle.

It’s important to understand that to deliver for the target market who really want to exploit and stretch these features, they have to be supported by the generation of full RAW files. JPEG-only implementations are at best a compromise which negate many of the fundamental capabilities of the camera in the hands of more expert users.

So here are my requests:

Expose To The Right Metering. Although the latest sensors and RAW processing software offer much-improved highlight handling, an image is still effectively irrecoverable if there is substantial over-exposure of the highlights. With a difficult scene I tend to manually dial in exposure compensation until the highlights are just fully exposed, and then shoot. While advances such as the zebra pattern make this easier, why can’t I just tell the camera that this is my preferred metering mode and get it automated?

Built-in HDR with RAW Support. The built-in HDR is JPEG-only with fixed settings, which is very limited. To add insult to injury the camera supports my preferred 2-stop exposure bracket in the “HDR” mode but I can’t set it manually! Ideally the HDR mode would also save 3x RAW files, for later processing. If that’s not possible, please at least make it possible to set auto-bracketing with 3 images 2 stops apart, and set some EXIF data so that the images are tagged as a group.

Automated Focus Bracketing. The new "Post Focus" mode gets close to this, especially in combination with the latest version of Helicon Focus, but being based on 4K video it effectively generates 8MP JPEG files, which don’t allow for any significant post-processing of the image, and produces an output significantly below the native resolution for stills. Now that you have created a "take an image autofocused at each point in turn" algorithm, please can we have a version with does a "focus sweep" but generates a series of related RAW files? It doesn’t matter that it would run a bit slower, and you could minimise the data set by only taking shots at distinct focal distances.

Hyperfocal Auto-Focus. It would be great if I could set a focus mode along the lines of "cover all focus points if you can". Alternatively as the GX8’s EXIF data includes "hyperfocal length" it also ought to be possible to have an autofocus mode which sets automatically to this, and then maybe shows what’s in focus via focus peaking. I know I can do this manually, but an automated option would be very useful.

Note Taking, Tagging and Content Enrichment. The camera has some annotation and tagging capabilities, but they are limited, and JPEG-only. At the very least these should work equally for RAW files. If you don’t want to modify the RAW file after capture (understandable), then why not write to a standard XMP file?. Most RAW processors will then read this information at the same time as the RAW, and write it into the EXIF data of the output files.

Tripod Sensitivity. Although stabilisation mechanisms are getting progressively more tolerant, the manual still recommends you manually switch stabilisation off when the camera is on a tripod. Why can’t this be automated?

Platform

I’ve written at length about why camera manufacturers should stop thinking of their cameras as monolithic products, and start thinking of them as platforms for development, just as all mobile phones have become and Panasonic and Sony (to name just two) already treat their televisions. This would allow the wider development community to deliver the features in the previous section, and others, if Panasonic don’t want to do so themselves. To make this work, we’d need the following:

A software development kit, API and "app store" or similar for the development and delivery of in-camera "apps". For example, it should be possible to develop an ETTR metering module, which the user can choose as an optional metering mode (instead of standard matrix metering). This would be activated in place of the standard metering routine, take in current exposure, and return required exposure settings and perhaps some correction metadata. Obviously the camera would have to check that the returned values are "safe" values, but in a mirrorless camera it should be very easy to check that the exposure settings are "reasonable" and revert to a default if not. Other add-ins could tap into events such as the completion of an exposure, or could activate functions such as setting focal distance. The API should either be development language-agnostic, or should support a well-known language such as Java, C++ or VB. That would also make it easier to develop an IDE (exploiting Visual Studio or Eclipse as a base), emulators and the like. There’s no reason why the camera needs an "open" operating system.

An SDK for phone apps. This might be an even easier starting point, albeit with limitations. Currently Panasonic provide some extended functions (e.g. geotagging) via the companion "Image App", but this app is "closed", and if it doesn’t do you want, that’s an end of it. It should be relatively easy to open up this API, by providing libraries which other developers can access. My note taking concept could easily be delivered this way. The beauty of this approach is that it has few or no security issues for the camera, and the application management infrastructure is delivered by Google, Apple and Microsoft.

An open way to share, extend and move metadata. The right solution is support for XMP companion files which can accompany the RAW file through the development process, being progressively enhanced by different tools, and relevant data will be permanently written to the output JPEG. This doesn’t have to be restricted to static, human-readable information. If, for example, the ETTR metering module can record the difference between its exposure and the one set by the default matrix method, then this can be used by the RAW processing to automatically "normalise" back to standard exposure during processing. XMP files have the great advantages that they are already an open standard, designed to be extensible and shared between multiple applications, and it’s pretty trivial to write code to manipulate them, so this route would be much better than opening up the proprietary EXIF metadata structures.

A controllable camera. What I mean by this is that the features of the camera which might be within the scope of the new "apps" must be set via buttons, menus and "continuous" controls (e.g. wheels with no specific set positions), so that they can be over-ridden or adjusted by software. While I personally prefer the ergonomics of "soft" controls, in this instance they are also a solution which promotes flexibility, which is what we’re seeking to achieve here.

This doesn’t have to be done in one fell swoop, and it might not be 100% appropriate for every camera. However Panasonic could make a great start by opening up the "Image App" library, which wouldn’t require any immediate changes to the cameras at all.

Conclusion

This is deliberately wide-ranging, and I acknowledge that some of it may be a bit contentious. If there are good reasons why some of what I’ve proposed wouldn’t work, then let me know. I’m also aware that not everyone will want everything I’m suggesting, but I’m trying to establish the idea of a more flexible approach which supports many working styles. There might well also be some discussion on priorities. Let’s have it. Let me know what you think.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/an-open-letter-to-panasonic/feed/0Platform Flexibility – It’s Alive!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/platform-flexibility-its-alive/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/platform-flexibility-its-alive/#respondMon, 04 Jan 2016 15:41:44 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1763Continue reading →]]>The last post, written largely back in November and published just before Christmas suggested that camera manufacturers should focus on opening up their products as development platforms, much as has happened with mobile phones. While I can’t yet report on this happening for cameras, I now have direct experience of exactly this approach in another consumer electronics area.

I decided to replace a large picture frame in my office with a electronic display, on which I could see a rolling presentation of my own images. This is not a new idea, but decreasing prices and improving specs brought into my budget the option of a 40"+ 4K TV, which on the experience of our main TV should be an excellent solution.

New Year’s Eve brought a trip to Richer Sounds in Guildford. As usual the staff were very helpful and we quickly narrowed down the options to equivalent models from Panasonic or Sony. The Panasonic option was essentially just a smaller version of our main TV, but the colours were slightly "off" and we preferred the picture quality of the Sony. The Panasonic’s slideshow application is OK, but limited, but the Sony’s built-app looked downright crude. It looked like a difficult choice, but then I realised that the Sony operating system is something called "AndroidTV" with Google Play support, and promised the option of a more open platform, maybe even development myself. Sold!

In practice, it’s exactly as I expected. The basic hardware is good, but the Sony’s default applications beyond the core TV are a bit crude. However a bit of browsing on Google Play revealed a couple of options, and I eventually settled on Kodi, a good open-source media player, which does about 90% of what I want for the slideshow. Getting it running was a bit fiddly, not least because a key picture-handling setting has to be set by uploading a small XML file rather than via the app’s UI, but after only a bit of juggling it’s now running well and doing most of what I want.

Beyond that, I can either develop an add-on for Kodi, or a native application for AndroidTV. However as the existing developer community has provided a 90% solution, I’m not in a great hurry.

I call that a result for platform vs product…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2016/platform-flexibility-its-alive/feed/0Do We Want Product Development, or Platform Flexibility?http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/do-we-want-product-development-or-platform-flexibility/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/do-we-want-product-development-or-platform-flexibility/#respondTue, 22 Dec 2015 07:48:12 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1760Continue reading →]]>There’s been a bit of noise recently in the photography blogosphere relating to how easy it is to make changes to camera software, and why, as a result, it feels like camera manufacturers are flat out not interested in the feature ideas of their professional and more capable enthusiast users. It probably started with this article by Ming Thein, and this rebuttal by Kirk Tuck, followed by this one and this one by Andrew Molitor.

The problem is that my "colleagues" (I’m not quite sure what the correct collective term is here) are wrong. For different reasons. They are all thinking of the camera as a unitary product, and none of them (even Molitor, who claims to have some experience as a system architect) are thinking as they should, of the camera as a platform.

OK, one at a time, please…

There are a lot of good ideas in Ming Thein’s article. A lot of his suggestions to improve current mirrorless cameras are good ones with which I agree. The trouble is that he is trying to design "Ming Thein’s perfect camera", and I suspect that it wouldn’t be mine. For a start it would end up far too heavy, too expensive and with too many knobs!

Kirk Tuck gets, this, and his article is a sensible exploration of trade-offs and how one photographer’s ideal may be another’s nightmare. However he paints a picture of flat-lining development which is very concerning, because there are some significant deficiencies in current mainstream cameras which it would be great to address.

Andrew Molitor then picks up this strand, and tries to explain why all camera feature development is difficult, and prohibitively expensive, and why Expose to the Right (ETTR) is especially difficult. Set aside that referring to Michael Reichmann as "a pundit" is unkind and a considerable underestimation of that eminent photographer’s capabilities, there are several fallacies in Molitor’s articles. Firstly, it just would not be as difficult as claimed to implement ETTR metering, or any variant of it. It’s just another metering calculation. If you have a camera with some form of live histogram or overexposure warning, then you can already operate this semi-manually, tweaking down the exposure compensation until the level of clipping is what you want. If you can do it via a predictable process, then that enormously powerful computer you call a digital camera can easily be made to replicate the same quickly and efficiently. That’s what the metering system does. It’s even quite likely that the engineers have already done something similar, but hidden it. (Hint: if you have a scene mode called something like "candle-lit interior", you’re almost there…)

I suspect the calculations of grossed-up cost are also fallacious. If that were the case, in a market which manages US sales of only a few tens of thousands of mirrorless cameras per year (for example), we would never get any new features at all. The twin realities are that by combining multiple features into the normal streams of product or major release development, many of the extra costs are amortised, but we also know that the big Japanese electronics companies apply different accounting standards to development of their flagship products. If Molitor’s argument was correct, we would not see features in each new camera such as a scene mode for "baby’s bottom on pink rug" (OK, I made that one up :)) or in-camera HDR, and things like that don’t seem to be a problem. I simply cannot believe that "baby’s bottom on pink rug" will generate millions of extra dollars revenue, compared with a "control highlight clipping" advanced metering mode, which would be widely celebrated by almost all equipment reviewers and advanced users.

So assuming that I’m right, and on-going feature development is both feasible and desirable, where does that leave us?

Ming Thein is not alone in expressing disappointment with the provision of improved features focused for the advanced photographer, and I agree with him that the slow progress is really very annoying. In my most recent review, I identified several relatively simple features which would be of significant value to the advanced photographer, and which could easily be implemented in the software of any good mirrorless camera without hardware changes, including:

Expose to the right or other "automatically control highlight clipping" metering

Optimisation for RAW Capture (e.g. histogram from RAW, not JPG)

Proper RAW-based support for HDR, panoramas, focus stacking and other multishot techniques

Focal distance read-out and hyperfocal focus

Note taking and other content enrichment

All of these have been identified requirements/opportunities since the early era of digital photography. Many of them are successfully implemented in a few, perhaps more unusual models. For example the Phase One cameras implement a lot of the focus-related features, the Olympus OM-D E5-II does a form of image stacking for resolution enhancement, and Panasonic have just introduced a very clever implementation of focus bracketing in the GX8 based on a short 4K burst. However by and large the mainstream manufacturers have not made any significant progress towards them. Even if Molitor’s analysis is correct, and this is all much more difficult than I expect (despite my strong software development experience) you would think that over time there would be at least some perhaps limited visible progress, but no. If the concepts were really "on the product backlog" (to use the iterative development term), then some would by now have "made the cut", but instead we get yet more features for registering babies’ faces…

My guess is that some combination of the following is going on:

The "advanced photographer" market is relatively small, and quite saturated. Camera manufacturers are therefore trying to make their mid-range products attractive to users who would previously have bought a cheaper device, and who may well consider just using a phone as an option. To do this, the device needs to offer lots of "ease of use" features.

Marketing and product management groups are focused on the output of "focus groups", which inevitably generate lowest-common denominator requirements which look a lot like current capabilities.

Manufacturers are fixated on a particular set of use cases and can’t conceive that anyone would use their products in a different way.

The trouble is that this leaves the more experienced photographers very frustrated. The answer is flexibility. By all means offer an in-camera, JPG-only HDR for the novice user, but don’t fob me off with it – offer me flexible RAW-based multishot support as well. Re-assignable buttons are a good step in the right direction, but they are not where flexibility begins and ends. The challenge, of course, is to find a way to provide this within fixed product cycles and limited budgets.

I think the answer lies with software architecture, and in particular how we view the digital camera. It’s time for us all, manufacturers and advanced users alike, to stop thinking of the camera as a "product", and start thinking of it as a "platform", for more open development. In this model the manufacturer still sells the hardware, complete with basic functionality. Others extend the platform, with "add-ins" or "apps", which exploit the hardware by providing new ways to drive and exploit its capabilities.

We’ve been here before. In the early noughties, mobile phone hardware had evolved beyond all recognition (my first mobile phone was a Vodafone prototype which filled one seat and the boot of my Golf GTI, and needed a six-foot whip antenna!) However, you bought your phone from Nokia, for example, and it did what it did. If you didn’t like the contact management functionality, you were stuck with it.

Then Microsoft, followed more visibly by Apple and eventually Google, broke this model, by delivering a platform, a device which made phone calls, sure, but which also supported a development ecosystem so that some people could develop "apps", and others could install and use those which met their needs. Contact management functionality is now limited only by the imagination of the developer community. Despite my criticism of some early attempts, the model is now pretty much universal, and I don’t think I could go back to a model where my phone was a locked-down, single-purpose device.

The digital camera needs to go the same way, and quickly before it is over-run by the phone coming at the same challenge from the other side. Camera manufacturers need to stop thinking about "what other features should we develop for the next camera", and instead direct themselves to two questions, one familiar and one not. The familiar one is, of course, "how can we make the hardware even better"? The unfamiliar one is "how can we open up this platform so that developers can exploit it, and deliver all that stuff the advanced users keep going on about"?

Ironically, for many manufacturers many of the concepts are in place, just not joined up. The big manufacturers all offer open lens mounts, so that anyone can develop lenses for their bodies. In the case of Panasonic, Olympus and the other micro-four thirds partners it’s even an open multi-party standard. Panasonic certainly now deliver "platform" televisions with the concept of third party apps. There’s a healthy community of "hackers" developing modified firmware for Canon and Panasonic cameras, albeit at arms length from and with a slightly ambivalent relationship to the manufacturers. I’m sure many of those would very much prefer to be working as partners, within an open development model.

So what should such a "platform for extensibility" look like? Assuming we have a high-end mirrorless camera (something broadly equivalent to a Panasonic GX8) to work with as base platform, here are some ideas:

A software development kit, API and "app store" or similar for the development and delivery of in-camera "apps". For example, it should be possible to develop an ETTR metering module, which the user can choose as an optional metering mode (instead of standard matrix metering). This would be activated in place of the standard metering routine, take in current exposure, and return required exposure settings and perhaps some correction metadata. Obviously the manufacturer would have to make sure that any such module returned "safe" values, but in a mirrorless camera it should be very easy to check that the exposure settings are "reasonable" and revert to a default if not. Other add-ins could tap into events such as the completion of an exposure, or could activate functions such as setting focal distance. The API should either be development language-agnostic, or should support a well-known language such as Java, C++ or VB. That would also make it easier to develop an IDE (exploiting Visual Studio or Eclipse as a base), emulators and the like. There’s no reason why the camera needs an "open" operating system.

An SDK for phone apps. This might be an even easier starting point, albeit with limitations. Currently manufacturers such as Panasonic provide some extended functions (e.g. geotagging) via a companion app for the user’s phone, but these apps are "closed", and if they don’t do what you want, that’s an end of it. It would be very easy for these manufacturers to open up this API, by providing libraries which other developers can access. My note taking concept could easily be delivered this way. The beauty of this approach is that it has few or no security issues for the camera, and the application management infrastructure is delivered by Google, Apple and Microsoft.

An open way to share, extend and move metadata. Panasonic support some content enrichment, but in an absolutely nonsensical way, as those features only work for JPEG files. What Panasonic appear to be doing is writing to the JPEG EXIF data, but not even copying to the RAW files. The right solution is support for XMP companion files. These can then accompany the RAW file through the development process, being progressively enhanced by different tools, and relevant data will be permanently written to the output JPEG. This doesn’t have to be restricted to static, human-readable information. If, for example, the ETTR metering module can record the difference between its exposure and the one set by the default matrix method, then this can be used by the RAW processing to automatically "normalise" back to standard exposure during processing. XMP files have the great advantages that they are already an open standard, designed to be extensible and shared between multiple applications, and it’s pretty trivial to write code to manipulate them, so this route would be much better than opening up the proprietary EXIF metadata structures.

A controllable camera. What I mean by this is that the features of the camera which might be within the scope of the new "apps" must be set via buttons, menus and "continuous" controls (e.g. wheels with no specific set positions), so that they can be over-ridden or adjusted by software. They must not be set by fixed manual switches, which may or may not be set where the software requires. The Nikon DF or the Fuji XT1 may suit the working style of some photographers – that’s fine – but they are unsuited to the more flexible software environment I’m envisaging. While I prefer the ergonomics of "soft" controls, in this instance they are also a solution which promotes flexibility, which is what we’re seeking to achieve here.

This doesn’t have to be done in one fell swoop, and it might not be achieved (or even appropriate) 100% for every camera. That’s fine. Panasonic, for example, could make a great start by opening up the "Image App" library, which wouldn’t require any immediate changes to the cameras at all.

So how about it?

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/do-we-want-product-development-or-platform-flexibility/feed/0A Surprisingly Tricky Subjecthttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/a-surprisingly-tricky-subject/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/a-surprisingly-tricky-subject/#respondTue, 22 Dec 2015 07:36:06 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1757Continue reading →]]>This really shouldn’t difficult. The image above is from the entrance to the Rinpung Dzong, in Paro. It’s a series of pictures of Buddhist deities which have been painted on bits of cloth, glued to the wall, and joined at the seams. Yes, it’s a stitched panorama. So why was it so difficult to make a photographic stitched panorama of it?

I set the camera to appropriate manual settings (to make sure that exposure was constant), faced each panel in turn, and when no-one was in shot took a picture. I then developed the JPEGs with exactly the same settings in Capture One. There was good overlap between the images, and as by definition it’s a series of images with a visible seam it ought to be straightforward to stitch images back together.

There seem to be two main challenges. Firstly as far as I can see all automatic stitching software assumes that the camera is roughly static, whereas I was shooting in a long thin tunnel, and moved the camera to face each subject. This is a well-established shooting technique, but seems to have minimal software support. Second, despite the manual exposure the resultant images vary significantly in brightness, and it looks like the camera was doing some measure of adjustment for the tricky lighting.

In the end I "went manual", importing the pictures as four layers in PhotoShop Elements, hand tweaking their position and geometry using free transforms, and then using the technique of painting the layer masks to choose exactly which elements of each image are visible in the final shot. The result isn’t perfect, but probably "good enough". In the meantime I’ve bitten the bullet and invested in some new stitching software which is supposed to cater for "moving camera" combinations, and we’ll see if it can make a better attempt.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/a-surprisingly-tricky-subject/feed/0Bhutan: What Technology Worked, and What Didn’thttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/bhutan-what-technology-worked-and-what-didnt/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/bhutan-what-technology-worked-and-what-didnt/#respondTue, 15 Dec 2015 06:57:06 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1754Continue reading →]]>Bhutan isn’t especially demanding on equipment. If your style of photography is similar to mine you will need a wide range of focal lengths, from ultra-wide (for when there’s limited space in front of a large building) to long telephoto (for inspecting details of the landscape). Outside light is usually very powerful, but inside you will rapidly need some combination of high ISO, fast lenses and a tripod. If anything the greatest challenge is the relatively harsh, direct lighting during the day (when the temples and Dzongs are open), and you will need to watch for flare and the effects of polarisation.

Dust can be a bit of a challenge, especially on or near the roads. It does tend to get everywhere, even inside filter pouches for example, but a filter will protect your lens, and other kit will just need a careful dust down. My excellent Hoya high-transmission 58mm polarising filter picked up a small scratch, but that’s a small price for providing both its optical services and protecting the lenses.

Shot Counts

The scores are in, and the shot counts are as follows:

Panasonic GX8: Almost exactly 3,000 shots. Quite a lot of those are for "multi shot" images, including 3D for the first time this year

Overall the totals are very similar to Morocco, albeit with a different camera mix. It looks like I’ll have about the normal 50% discard count, and end up with around 100-200 images which I want to show people, which is fine.

Panasonic Cameras

The Panasonic cameras have worked well. The GX8 is fast and produces great image quality. Its viewfinder is large and bright (although I have to acknowledge that the Fuji XT1 is even nicer), but does seem to be more sensitive to white balance changes than previous models. This means that you may see a bit of a red or brown cast on the live image in some cases, which doesn’t affect the captured image but can be slightly off-putting. It wouldn’t surprise me if this attracts a firmware change at some point.

Handling of the GX8 is good, but the viewfinder and controls are just different enough from the GX7 that you can’t just leave a different lens on the older body and switch quickly back and forth between them.

Even though it packs a much bigger battery than the GX7 battery life is still only moderate. I never used more than 3 per day, but that could have increased if we had done significant action shooting, so my purchase of a total of 4 was probably justified.

Bags

The National Geographic Africa Medium Backpack is an excellent device for carrying equipment between locations. It meets the most miserly airline carry-on restrictions, but easily swallowed my 15“ laptop, tablet, 4 Panasonic bodies, 8 lenses including the 100-300mm, a small flash and various odds and ends.

Unfortunately it’s pretty bloody useless as a working bag on location. The only way to extract kit is to take it off completely and lay it flat on the ground, getting it and then you filthy, and the whole process is very fiddly. Luckily I had allowed for this and fitted one of my Lowepro Nova shoulder bags (the 180 AW) into my hold luggage. This has room for the main body and lenses, the infrared GF3 and bits & pieces with room over for a small water bottle.

Sony RX100 Mk IV

First impressions of the Sony RX100 mark IV are excellent. It is fast, with almost DSLR-like autofocus, and the image quality is superb – more or less a match for my Panasonic cameras at moderate ISOs. My camera has had a "baptism of fire" being used mainly to try and get grab shots from a moving bus, so maybe not exactly a fair test, but has delivered decent results albeit with some misses. Although the EVF is small, and does seem to need quite regular re-adjustment against my glasses, it is clear and perfectly usable in a way which wasn’t true of the Panasonic GM5 I tried.

The handling is a bit fiddly, but I wouldn’t subscribe to some of the complaints I have read in internet interviews. However it is far to easy to accidentally change shooting mode, and the other problem I have had is accidentally pressing the power button instead of the shutter, and switching the camera off at just the wrong moment. If you have the camera at arms length in a tricky shooting position, the feel of the two controls is just not different enough.

Battery life is limited, although no worse than other cameras with a similar sized battery (like the Canon S120). Sony’s insistence on in-camera charging is annoying, and I’ve now purchased a third party charger and spare batteries from Germany.

I tried carrying my camera just in my trouser pocket, where it fits well. However it rapidly picked up a number of small scratches on the rear screen. Nothing fundamental, but a real annoyance on a brand new, expensive little camera. This seems to be a vulnerability of Sony cameras, with one of the other members of the group suffering a similar problem with his A7. I’m hoping that I can fit a screen protector to restore the original appearance, and am now carrying the camera in a small cloth pouch which came with a Metz flashgun.

Other Notes

One other annoyance is that I changed my phone earlier this year from a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 to a Note 3. The older Notes had very good GPS, getting accurate fixes quickly in most conditions. The Note 3 has a useless GPS, taking time to get a good fix even at the top of a mountain under cloudless skies! As a result my GPS track has a couple of annoying gaps in it, and I’ve had to do a lot of manual work and fix it, which has never been necessary on previous trips.

At the same time, my Note 10.1" tablet seems to have suddenly lost most of its battery capacity, and is only good for about 4-5 hours, not long enough for some of the flights on this trip. I am seriously thinking of a shift in loyalties.

Overall a few annoyances, but I managed to travel quite light, and unlike some trips there were no major problems. That’s a refreshing change.

Sorry it’s been quiet for a couple of weeks. Inevitably there’s catching up to do on the return from a trip, plus I’ve had a couple of practical challenges before I could start properly sorting out the photos from the trip. However things are working OK now.

As always at the end of these trips, I’ve prepared a couple of posts with general observations on the trip, in the hope that it may be of assistance to someone planning a similar visit. To keep things manageable, this post focuses on the trip as a whole, and the following post focuses on photography and equipment matters. There will be a final post reflecting on my observations of Bhutan, the country and people.

On a positive note, the people everywhere were friendly, welcoming and most were happy to pose for the camera, without expectation of more than a "thank you". In reality most away from direct tourist contact have limited English, although that will change, but they all understand basic pleasantries well enough.

Bhutan is not an expensive location once you’re there and the $250 per day has been paid to the tour operator. My additional costs (mainly tips, T-shirts and beer) probably came to not much more than £200. Western money goes a long way in a country with a 1p note! There are plenty of stalls and shops selling handicrafts, but they understand the value of a "no thank you", and there are no street hawkers or other more annoying channels. There’s no need to haggle, and transactions are very straightforward with no nasty catches, but you do need to be aware of prices which can vary substantially between locations (beer varying between about £1 and £3, for example).

Travel in Bhutan is slow. 20kph is a very good speed in a bus, 15kph is a more sensible basis for estimating. One suspects that the current over-ambitious programme of simultaneously trying to widen almost all the roads is doomed to failure, or at least to very late delivery, so things will probably get worse before they improve.

In hindsight, the trip to Bumthang cost us two long days of uncomfortable travel for not much benefit, and I think most participants on our trip will be advising Light and Land to omit if from future itineraries. If your itinerary includes statements like "a full day of travel", question whether that is the best use of time and endurance, or whether further exploration of the nearer areas will be of more benefit.

Be wary of overcrowding on the transport. The standard tour buses are not terribly comfortable, and have a lower real capacity in practice than you might expect. They have a typical nominal seating capacity of 16-17 plus the driver and guide, but 4 seats are over the wheel arches with zero legroom, the back seat bounces so much that it suits only the hardiest, and there’s zero internal baggage space (suitcases are typically transported between hotels in an independent vehicle). Assume a maximum of 12 usable seats for longer journeys, in addition to the driver and guide.

Food is essentially Indo-Chinese buffets, mainly vegetarian with some chicken, although in the east you might also get a pork or beef dish. (I wrote most of this post at Doha airport, and I have never seen so many people queueing for a hamburger, in a Muslim country!… :))

The primary calorie source is uniformly boiled rice, although there is usually a secondary form such as potatoes, pasta or bread. Those catering more directly for tourists try and keep the main dishes fairly bland, with the chilli and garlic in separate dishes, but you can be caught out. One of the nastiest surprises of the trip for me was something called "cauliflower cheese", but about the strength and flavour of industrial defoliant!

The information I received about the weather was, essentially, lies. We had wonderful weather, dipping to around freezing most nights but between high teens and high twenties once the sun came up every day. We felt a couple of drops of rain once, and the mornings in Punakha started with a bit of mist, but otherwise we had zero precipitation. I had to carry a long-sleeved top or jacket for religious observation at the temples and Dzongs, but otherwise I could have operated entirely in T-shirts on all but two days. The waterproof, weatherproof tops, trousers, gloves etc. were completely unused.

Were we unusually lucky? It’s difficult to say, as this was the first time in Bhutan for all westerners in our party. However the fact that every other rooftop is covered with drying chillies, and the winter firewood is stacked in the open suggests that the Bhutanese are not expecting storms either.

This was my second trip (and the first for seven years) with Phil Malpas and Clive Minnitt of Light and Land. They continue to be great tour leaders: sensitive to the needs of their clients, well organised, and great fun to be with. As usual Light and Land partnered with a local tour provider (essential in Bhutan). Etho Metho provided a very good, supportive and knowledgeable guide in Yeshi, and I continue to be amazed by the accuracy and endurance of Chorten’s driving. Overall, a highly effective team.

So as a trip it worked well. Next: technology!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/last-light/feed/0Oh Well…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/oh-well/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/oh-well/#respondWed, 25 Nov 2015 12:53:57 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1740Continue reading →]]>You’d think that with tens of thousands of pounds worth of equipment, umpteen years of experience and an undying dedication to their art, 12 other photographers could take a nice picture of me. However, this was the handicraft of a passing Australian hiker who wasn’t even sure which button to press on my camera. Oh well…
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/oh-well/feed/0In Closehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/in-close/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/in-close/#respondWed, 18 Nov 2015 00:52:02 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1700Continue reading →]]>I’ve discovered that I’m tending to go to extremes with my lenses on this trip. The shot in the previous post used the 12-35mm at 12mm. This shot was taken down into the Punakha valley from above, using the 100-300mm at 300mm. It’s not bad when consumer camera technology allows you to count blades of grass at about a mile!
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/in-close/feed/0Mississippi Minimalisthttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/mississippi-minimalist/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/mississippi-minimalist/#respondThu, 05 Nov 2015 07:06:40 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1668Continue reading →]]>Not much to say about this one. I’m just catching up with some shots from our USA trip last year (trying to clear the decks a bit before the Bhutan trip which is now less than a week away). I’m quite pleased with the minimalist vibe here.
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/mississippi-minimalist/feed/0The Tail Endhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/the-tail-end/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/the-tail-end/#respondTue, 27 Oct 2015 06:55:40 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1662Continue reading →]]>Day 16

A much better night’s sleep. Washingtonians obviously follow the "Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting" rule, and cause less trouble on other nights. I’ve also developed a hybrid bath towel and pillow scheme which fares rather better in the head supporting department. Frances resorts to cotton wool in the ears.

Breakfast is taken at a rather unique institution across the road from our hotel, which appears to be a 24 hour political bookshop and cafe. I suppose if such is going to exist anywhere in the world, an area which houses many young people associated with the US administration is a good bet, but we certainly haven’t seen one before.

First stop after breakfast is the obligatory shot of the White House. Today there is almost no visible security activity and we are among a total of about 6 people at the fence. Much easier.

The bulk of the day is spent exploring the National Space and Flight Museum. It’s great seeing such iconic vehicles as the actual Apollo 11 command module, and we get the weight off our feet with a couple of excellent Imax films about astronomy.

We then pop over the road to the Museum of the Native American. This is rather less inspiring, reminding us of some rather less impressive American behaviour, but still interesting.

We finish up back at the bookshop. Oh well…

Day 17

Last day. Sniff…

First order of business is a tour of The Pentagon. This is mainly walking around a very large office building sandwiched between two very smartly dressed military men. In our case the lead is a young sailor who swears he’s over 6ft tall but we’re not convinced. However he certainly has the trick of walking backwards for an hour spouting a string of interesting nuggets and funny stories about the American military and their history.

For the afternoon we go to the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the news media. This substantial establishment deals with all aspects of the news media, including the history, ethics, risks and challenges of getting news to the people over the years. Historic papers go back to the 1500s. Static displays include items such as the antenna from the top of one of the Twin Towers, then used by all the New York media. More interactive displays include a fascinating quiz on how to handle the most challenging ethical publishing dilemmas. I even manage to buy a singlet with the slogan "Exercisin’ my right to bare arms"! Although squeezed into a few hours at the end, this is in some ways one of the highlights of our visit to Washington.

Our journey back takes in the third Washington airport at Baltimore, and uses train, plane, automobile and bus. However everything goes smoothly, and we’re home ahead of schedule.

What Worked And What Didn’t

This was my first trip with just the Panasonic cameras, and they appear to be an excellent solution. The GH4 combined with the two f/2.8 zooms is a first class kit which handles pretty well, although I’m still getting used to some of the button positioning, and I don’t have to worry about the odd bump or drop of rain. However it matches 2.5kg of Canon or Nikon kit while weighing less than a 550D and single lens. Around town I switch to the GX7 and the power zooms which lose little in capability and are so light I have to occasionally check they are still there.

The infrared-converted Panasonic GF3 seems to have produced some very interesting results from the rising clouds and running water of the Smoky Mountains, and the main cameras continue to surprise and delight in unexpected ways. It looks like the GH4 is designed to hunt for focus through each "plane" of a scene in turn, so if you just hold the camera steady and keep refocusing you should be able to capture all the shots required for focus blending. We’ll see how well this has worked in practice.

A rubbish night’s sleep. Between stupid pillows (of which more later), shouting drunks in the street, private cars beeping horns and the local emergency services insisting on using full sirens and horns throughout the small hours neither of us do very well. Frances is seriously considering shooting the paper seller outside. And apparently I snored, but I’m sure that’s not true.

Morning brings more peaceful conditions, although there’s still a drunk guy shouting for "Liam". After breakfast we move off to explore DC. Our first stop is the National Archives, which have been a target since we saw National Treasure. The display of the American Declaration of Independence etc. is just as good as expected. After that we browse a fascinating display of documents with interesting signatures, such as Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt about The Bomb, or Duke Ellington’s draft card.

Over coffee we watch a motorcade go past. Frances is sure Obama is in the limo, but I can’t be certain. Given the ambulance and fire engine following up his presence seems likely.

The main part of the day is spent wandering around the Washington Mall and the various memorials to key presidents and others. The new WW2 memorial is an impressive surprise, as is the way the space is clearly being used as an active park as well as a tourist centre. We’re entertained by a group of young blacks taking "glamour" photographs at the memorial to Martin Luther King, but mainly just impressed by the scope of memorials. We finish up by trying to view the White House, but for reasons unexplained the Secret Service decide to clear all onlookers out of the public areas just at the wrong time. However we do end up having coffee at The Willard Hotel where King finished his "I have a dream" speech.

We finally get back to the hotel very foot sore. Frances has read an article which suggests that genuine exhaustion is not uncommon among visitors to Washington as it’s easy to do more miles than you think. We may not be quite that bad, but ankles and knees are certainly complaining a bit. However overall it’s been an excellent day.

A day of odd contrasts. We awake to fog so thick we can’t see Abbot Lake from our room, a distance of about 30m. It’s still thick by the time we’ve had breakfast and checked out, and the first few miles along the Parkway are at about 20mph hugging the yellow lines.

However it also becomes clear that during the night while the fog effect was on someone also turned the "Fall" switch up to 11: there’s suddenly colour everywhere, with leaves falling like snow and forming a thick carpet across the road in some places.

After over an hour’s careful driving we need a coffee break and get off the Parkway. Buena Vista VA is a classic case of "get the problem out of the way in the title". It is – there’s no kind way to put this – a dump. Despite frequent and friendly-looking "welcome" banners all the way up the high street, nothing appears to be open, at 11 on a Friday morning. The only place serving coffee is a dreadful fast food joint where the collective IQ of the staff is probably still in double digits and suggests unkind jokes about Bulgarian policemen and dangerous intellectuals. We finish coffee and beat a hasty retreat back to the Parkway.

Less than 20 miles up the road we try again. "Vesuvius" is equally poorly named, as it turns out to be a very pretty, quiet rural community. We decide against the long waterfall hike, but get some charming photos and a very nice lunch at the Country Store.

I obviously haven’t read the Parkway guide carefully enough, and assume that a second mention of Crabtree Falls in my notes is a mis-print. However a careful read of the book reveals the note "not to be confused with the other Crabtree Falls in North Carolina". So having done both Lynchburgs we now visit a second Crabtree Falls. Not as impressive as the one further south, but worth a quick visit.

A few more miles brings the end of the Parkway, once again shrouded in fog and with rain threatening. Overall we’re extremely impressed by this long, thin National Park.

One oddity at the end of the day. The floor of the hotel bathroom is not slippery to the touch, or even in socks. My Italian shoes stick like glue to most surfaces. Yet they slide freely on the bathroom floor. Go figure…

Day 14

We drive into Shenandoah National Park, which is effectively just a continuation of the Parkway if you are driving South to North, albeit with an entrance fee and more park facilities. We don’t have time for a long hike, but instead focus on enjoying the steadily intensifying Autumn colour on the road and at many of the viewpoints.

It’s another dry and mainly sunny day, but the temperature has dropped markedly and I have to stop asserting my "right to bare arms" and put on more than a T shirt for the first time. Two days ago Lynchburg was 86°F, now we’re seeing just 50°F.

At the end of the Park we hit the freeway back to Washington. The drive is fairly painless, but we’re surprised how heavy the traffic is for a Saturday afternoon, and finding the Dollar return yard at Reagan airport, separate from all the other companies, is a bit of a magical mystery tour.

The Mustang is feeling desperate for a service, with squealing brakes and an increasingly clunky transmission, but the biggest mystery is the odometer. At various times in the trip I’ve used this to track progress to a waypoint without any problem, but subtracting the initial figure from the final one gives a total for the trip of 115 miles…

The Dupont Circle Hotel is elegant and well equipped, although our room would make more sense with one bed rather than trying to squeeze two in. We have dinner at a little Greek restaurant around the corner. We are at least 30 years too old to be drinking in the hotel’s main bar, and my hearing would never cope, but instead we find a small second bar where we have the charming barman to ourselves and enjoy some cocktails and bourbon samples.

Tomorrow we explore the city.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/the-end-of-the-road/feed/0Morocco Portfolio Uploadedhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/morocco-portfolio-uploaded/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/morocco-portfolio-uploaded/#respondThu, 24 Sep 2015 05:57:51 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1641Continue reading →]]>I’ve just finished processing my shots from Morocco, and have uploaded the portfolio to my album. In addition, there are several new panoramas you should notice at the top of my web pages. Take a look at www.andrewj.com/album/Morocco
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/morocco-portfolio-uploaded/feed/0Panasonic GX8 – First Impressionshttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/panasonic-gx8-first-impressions/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/panasonic-gx8-first-impressions/#respondWed, 02 Sep 2015 05:44:30 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1634Continue reading →]]>

I was asked the other day what I think of the Panasonic GX8. As I predicted here, it’s absolutely the right size: sit it on the desk next to the GX7 in its half-leather case, which is how I always use it, and they are exactly the same size to within a mm or two. It just feels right in my hands.

Otherwise it feels very much like a cross between the GX7’s neat rangefinder ergonomics and the GH4’s speed and weather protection, pretty much just as requested. There are a couple of minor annoyances:

I’m peeved that the battery is a different model to the GX7 (and the various other Panasonic cameras I own). Apparently shared with the G7 in the current line-up, it looks suspiciously like the one from my old GH2. So bang goes the aspiration of travelling with just one battery type and charger… That said, it does seem to offer much better life, so there are pros and cons.

Moving the "rear dial" from the edge of the top panel (like the GH models) to the top of the panel will take a little getting used to, but I suspect that will feel second nature fairly quickly.

Panasonic have gone down the GH4 route of putting the focus mode on a physical switch. I broadly understand why, as if this is set wrong it can easily trip you up in a very confusing way, but the counterpoint is that I can no longer set focus mode associated with custom settings, but will have to manually adjust separately. On balance, I prefer a button/menu.

The loss of the flash is a minor annoyance, but realistically I almost never use one any longer as I prefer to just "take pictures in the dark" using the remarkable high ISO capability of the new cameras. If previous patterns are borne out, I expect ISO 6400 to be fully usable.

It’s too early to judge image quality, as there’s no Capture One support yet, but the in-camera JPGs are pretty impressive.

Watch this space.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/panasonic-gx8-first-impressions/feed/0Man at Workhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/man-at-work-2/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/man-at-work-2/#respondTue, 25 Aug 2015 06:04:13 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1630Continue reading →]]>Another low-contrast shot from the Marrakech Medina, which didn’t look promising out of the camera, but I think works well after processing. This was at a much shorter range than the "bread" shot of last week’s post, but the cloud of dust and sparks from the active grinding wheel had much the same effect. I turned Capture One’s clarity slider up almost to maximum to try and cut through the haze a bit, with an almost "painterly" result. I think it works…
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/man-at-work-2/feed/0More Multishot Techniques, and Going 3Dhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/more-multishot-techniques-and-going-3d/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/more-multishot-techniques-and-going-3d/#respondSat, 15 Aug 2015 21:48:56 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1621Continue reading →]]>I have been using multiple shot techniques almost as long as I have been interested in photography. My earliest stitched panoramas were in the days when you got a spare set of prints and took out the razor blade and sellotape. I also have a rather nice picture of Frances using the "soft focus" double exposure setting of the Canon AE1.

However things really got going when I moved to digital. For several years I have done stitched panoramas and HDR. I have also experimented with focus blending to generate images with infinite depth of field, although I haven’t yet got my technique quite right to get the best results. All of these are well-established, well-supported techniques with good support in terms of both documentation and software.

The digital community moves on, and new techniques and capabilities are appearing. The new Olympus OMD cameras support an in-camera multi-shot technique to build ultra-high definition files. Another new technique which has caught my eye is the idea of "median blending": take a large number of pictures of a scene with annoying moving objects, such as other tourists and then blend them together to find the median colour at each point. As long as you have enough pictures in the stack that there are several "clear" at each point, all the annoying moving objectsTM magically disappear. The only problems with this are that it really can’t be done hand-held unless you are very steady, and the only really effective software support is in the full version of PhotoShop, which I’m loathe to invest in. Other software options are on the way, and I can then see this becoming a regular part of the toolkit.

In the meantime, I’ll continue occasional use of the original single-shot version of this process. Take a long enough exposure of a scene with annoying moving objectsTM and most of the annoying moving objectsTM disappear of their own accord, or become faint ghosts at worst.

In the last week, I’ve identified another multishot technique which may get a significant workout. We’re both fans of 3D films. In Paris, we saw an exhibition of Jacques Lartigues’ photography, which included some of his stereographic images. What the gallery had done is to scan these, and convert the slideshow to a short 3D film which could be viewed with standard cinema 3D glasses, and it got me thinking…

I now own a 50", 4K, 3D display. It’s called my television. We had already concluded that slideshows on the TV are the best way to show my photographs to Frances and visitors. The "lights on" moment was to question whether I could generate my own 3D images and display those in the same way. It turns out that this is perfectly possible, but surprisingly poorly documented on the interweb.

Option 1 – The Panasonic 3D Lens

This is easy. Micro four-thirds cameras can use a special lens from Panasonic. It’s not very expensive, and not much bigger than a lens cap. Put it on, and the camera goes into 3D mode, and creates special image files in the .MPO format. Put these on a memory stick and view them on the TV, the TV goes into 3D mode, you put on the glasses, and voila!, 3D images.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the implementation’s a bit limited. First the lens is fixed focal length, fixed focus, fixed aperture. The focal length is 68mm-e, on the telephoto side of normal and not a length I’d often use for static subjects. The other significant limitation is that like most in-camera implementations of HDR, panoramas and so on, you just get a "pre-baked" .MPO and .JPG file, with no RAW. You have to get all the image characteristics right first time in camera, and there are some restrictions on what you can do in any case. Worse, the output is an odd 1024×1824 resolution, which isn’t even enough to fill a full HD display, let alone 4K.

It’s a useful trick to have, especially for moving subjects, and as the lens is tiny I’ll carry it around, but the conclusion is "not good enough".

Option 2 – Blending Two Images

There’s an obvious alternative, at least in principle. Take a shot, move the camera right about 6cm, and take another of the same scene. Then somehow "merge" them into an MPO file, similar to a stitched panorama.

The challenge is that it takes a lot of googling to find some software capable of doing the merge. Eventually I tracked down the brilliant little program StereoPhotoMaker ("little" is right – it’s a single 2MB executable file). It does what it says on the tin – takes a pair of images, aligns them, and saves the result to various 3D formats, including my target .MPO file. Amazingly for such a small program it’s not just limited to that, and includes a number of clever adjustment and file management features, although realistically in a RAW-based workflow you are going to do most of the image adjustment and management externally.

The great thing is that this process isn’t limited in the same way as Option 1. It works with any lens, any settings, and takes the full resolution JPGs produced after anything Capture One can do, so the resulting images are more than capable of driving the 4K TV to its full capability. Like stitched panoramas, if you’re working on a tripod there’s no theoretical reason why you can’t combine it with other multishot techniques, so you could in theory produce a 3D focus blended HDR with annoying moving objectsTM automatically removed, although that would take a bit of discipline and patience to get the right shot list :).

The only real drawback is the one common to most multishot techniques – it really requires a static scene, unless you are going to manage the moving objects via either median blending or very long exposures.

There are a few annoyances to resolve, like why my TV can see the files on a memory stick but not over the network, but I’ll get there…

This is simple, easy and requires no special equipment or technique change. All I need to do is remember to take a second shot of any suitable scene, and this approach could produce some great results.

Option 3 – Two Cameras?

Stereographic imaging has been around for about 150 years. For most of that time photographers used a simple technique which works with any subject, static or not, and doesn’t rely on clever digital manipulation. Stick two cameras side by side, and take two shots simultaneously.

Although traditionally this is done with two identical cheap cameras, I’m not convinced that’s essential. The cameras do need to use the same sensor, and the same lens, but as I have two copies of the excellent, featherweight Panasonic 12-42mm power zoom and a growing collection of Panasonic bodies that shouldn’t be a challenge. Knocking up a suitable bracket should also be fairly straightforward. In my loft I have a device which might provide a very useful basis for this – a "pistol grip" camera mount which includes a trigger for the remote release – and it might be appropriate to use standard tripod quick-release plates to speed assembly and disassembly. With the Panasonic remote release system based on standard 2.5mm jack plugs the wiring should also be fairly straightforward.

The challenge is to make sure that both cameras and both lenses are set identically. There’s obviously a simple manual process for this, but it’s potentially a bit of a faff. However I’m wondering if the Panasonics’ ability to be controlled over Wifi from a phone is the answer – develop a bit of software which reads the settings from the "master" camera and applies them to the "slave". That’s maybe a bit more work, but worth investigating.

I’m torn as to whether this is worth the effort, and the extra weight to carry, or not. I have a bit of a history of spending time and effort to do something complicated, and then not using it very much. Watch this space…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/more-multishot-techniques-and-going-3d/feed/0It’s Not Just What You Do With It, Size IS Importanthttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/its-not-just-what-you-do-with-it-size-is-important/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/its-not-just-what-you-do-with-it-size-is-important/#respondThu, 23 Jul 2015 05:22:24 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1616Continue reading →]]>On paper, the Panasonic GM5 should be an ideal "carry around" camera for me. The same sensor and processor as the excellent GX7 and GH4 in a neat pocket-sized packaged. A proper electronic viewfinder. Access to all the Micro Four Thirds lenses. Panasonic’s engineers have even been cunning beyond the normal behaviour of camera manufacturers and although it has a different battery to its larger brethren, it uses exactly the same charger. I’d managed to get a couple of minutes "hands on" in a shop and was reasonably impressed.

Last week, driven to Amazon by their remarkably "rubbish but effective" Prime Day pseudo-sale, I bit the bullet and ordered one, in a cheerful red. The general capability and image quality, as evidenced above, is all I expected. However, after a few days in my hands it’s going to go back. The reason – size. Like all disappointing love stories, it’s complicated…

It’s Too Large…

Although the GM5 body is tiny, not much larger than a Canon Powershot S series, put a lens, any lens, on the front, and it becomes too large to put in your trouser pocket, and too large to comfortably travel in my computer bag the whole time. In addition, I really need two lenses to cover a decent zoom range. The Panasonic 14-42mm and 45-175mm power zooms are both tiny, but together they make it into a package which demands a camera bag, in reality no different to using a next size up body.

… But It’s Too Small

In use, the camera is remarkably fiddly. I could live with the small buttons, but their legends and markings have also been scaled down, to a point which is almost invisible to me when I’m wearing my glasses. Also the smaller body puts my hands much closer to the lens and viewfinder in use, and I find that with the camera to my eye my hands are fouling my glasses.

Even wearing the smallest lens I own (the 14-42 PZ), there’s a bad case of "lens too big for the camera", and it won’t even sit flat on the desk. More of an issue, there’s no easy way to carry it in the hand, except gripping right round the body or lens, which makes it difficult to raise to the eye for a quick shot without having to use both hands.

For me, however, the killer is the tiny EVF. Impressive in the shop, in real use out and about, wearing my glasses, it’s almost unusable. The effective view size is tiny, and despite several attempts at adjustment I couldn’t get the view sharp with my glasses. You get, at best, a sense of what’s in shot, rather than being able to scan the picture for meaningful details. (Ideally I would have avoided the sextant statue "fouling" the statue of Edward VII on his horse in the above shot, but I just couldn’t see that detail.) If I can’t use the EVF I’d rather have a camera with a size larger rear screen, to give me some chance of being able to use it with glasses on, and in varying ambient light conditions.

So much though I wanted to like this camera, It isn’t for me. Sometimes engineers can shoot for a compromise between two opposing targets and pull off a remarkable double. My delightfully schizophrenic Mercedes Cabrio is a case in point. Sometimes, however, you end up with the worst of both worlds, and that’s what’s happened here.

Just Right?

Ironically, the day I ordered the GM5, Panasonic announced the follow-up model to my much-loved GX7, unsurprisingly named the GX8. The improvements in pixel count, functionality and weather protection are all almost uniformly welcomed, but there’s been some criticism of the fact that the GX8 is a bit bigger than its predecessor, by about 5mm in height and depth, 10mm in width, and 75g in weight.

Now I love my GX7. It’s my favourite camera of the many I’ve owned. But it’s never been out of the house except wearing the bottom half of the "ever ready case" Panasonic supplied with it. This improves its fit to my hand no end. By my estimate, the ERC adds about 5mm to the height and depth, and about 10mm to the width, and weighs somewhere between 25 and 50g. It sounds like the GX8 is spot on!

I wait with baited breath…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/its-not-just-what-you-do-with-it-size-is-important/feed/0Crash, Bang, Wallop, What a Picturehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/crash-bang-wallop-what-a-picture/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/crash-bang-wallop-what-a-picture/#respondTue, 14 Jul 2015 05:39:28 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1613Continue reading →]]>I was literally just about to get into bed in my hotel in Liverpool last night, when the air was rent with loud explosions. Fortunately nothing sinister – just fireworks giving a cruise ship a good send-off on her voyage. My hotel room was very well positioned to watch the show, with the fireworks and the ship visible through Liverpool’s "Big Wheel".

I did have my little Canon S120 in my bag, and couldn’t resist trying to capture the scene. I had a minor panic as I ran round the hotel room and rummaged through my bag trying to find something on which to rest the camera – good fireworks photos need exposures of 10s or longer. In the end I think this one was taken with the camera propped up on the TV remote control. Not ideal, but a reasonable success given the circumstances…

I had parked a number of shots from the Dades Gorge, because we were shooting almost into the setting sun, and they were either hazy, or very low in contrast and the in-camera JPEGs look almost "blown out". However it was right to hold these back until I could exert the full capability of Capture One on the RAW files. Here is one where to get the best effect I’ve really had to deepen the shadows, but I think it works, bringing out not only the shapes of the rocks, but also their shadows on one another.

Let me know what you think.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/dark-shadows/feed/0It’s Not the Camera, It’s the Photographer… Well, Sort Of…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/its-not-the-camera-its-the-photographer-well-sort-of/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/its-not-the-camera-its-the-photographer-well-sort-of/#respondWed, 24 Jun 2015 05:27:29 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1602Continue reading →]]>There’s a frequently made assertion in photography books and blogs that the choice of kit doesn’t really matter, and a good photographer will make great images regardless. I don’t altogether agree. While I think it’s laudable to encourage photographers to focus on their images rather than gear acquisition, I also think this is quite misleading.

For all that’s written, you won’t find many professionals using low-end cameras to do their serious, paying work. There’s a reason why a hairdresser’s scissors cost £200, and I’m perfectly happy with a pair which costs £10. At the same time the hairdresser is probably perfectly happy with a laptop costing £200, while I expect to pay more like £2,000 for my main professional tool as a roving computer consultant, plus I’ll always have a spare of similar spec.

If you’re earning a living from photography (or doing expensive trips/shoots even on an enthusiast basis) there are some of the same considerations. One dimension is simply the durability of the more substantially-built models – you need a device which will just go on shooting after, to take my example, being bashed on a rock, in a bog, in the middle of nowhere, in Iceland. In some cases it’s about capability. OK, if you’re Jaques Lartigue you can get decent sports photographs with a view camera, but if you’re a mere mortal then you’ll get a substantially higher hit rate with the lightning autofocus and high frame rate of a Canon 7D. I love my little Panasonic GX7, but it doesn’t do action, and it doesn’t do getting wet!

Of course, there’s no guarantee that by spending more money you are getting a better tool for your work. My counter-example is, ironically, the same Canon kit. I’m becoming more and more aware of just how ghastly a lens the Canon 15-85mm is/was. Take a look at the shot above. Even at web resolutions you can see that the reflection of the house’s roof in the pond is sharp, but the roof itself, optically at the same distance and without water in the way, is blurred. The results from my newer Panasonic cameras, even with the inexpensive, diminutive 14-42mm power zoom lens, are just consistently sharper than than those from Canon even with a good, sharp, lens on it. And of course the 15-85mm died dramatically on the Iceland trip even before the incident where I knocked the 7D on a rock.

In a very real way the Canon 7D & 15-85mm combination actively held back my photography. I got into the bad habit of relying on the long zoom range, I got tired of carrying the weight, so didn’t use it as much as I should, and I’m now seeing from straightforward back to back comparisons from my Morocco trip that the image quality was definitely poorer, visible even in web-resolution versions, let alone pixel peeping at 100%. I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s either not possible to build a good zoom lens for APS-C with a good zoom range, or Canon can’t be bothered to do so.

I think, therefore, that the right way to view the camera/photographer equation is as a combination of two components. Both must exceed a certain minimum: a brilliant photographer may struggle with a very poor camera, and a poor photographer will not achieve much with an expensive camera. Beyond that, it’s a sum but where the photographer’s skill probably has a greater weight.

In terms of "what camera should I buy", the first thing to understand is that equipment purchases won’t compensate for your skill deficiencies. A camera purchase is also an engineering compromise. You need to understand your requirements (in particular what subjects and working style you want to follow), and choose kit which best fits that scope. If you really want to work without changing lenses, for example, buy a fixed lens superzoom! A little while ago I found the following wonderful decision tree. It’s designed to some extent for laughs, but there’s also a lot a truth in it. And without any cheating, it says I should go Micro Four Thirds, so it works!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/its-not-the-camera-its-the-photographer-well-sort-of/feed/0Into the (Infra)Redhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/into-the-infrared/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/into-the-infrared/#respondTue, 16 Jun 2015 06:03:19 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1599Continue reading →]]>Last Summer I purchased a Panasonic GF3 which had been converted to infrared photography. Like with many gadgets, there’s a period where you play with the funky effects, and I quite like the way you can get a really deep blue sky if you do a "channel swap" on the processed image. However I have now established its milieu, and that’s dramatic black and white shots of either partially cloudy skies, or graphic vegetation.

To help with this, I now have it set up to record RAW+JPG, with the picture style set to monochrome. The in-camera results may be slightly different from where the processed image ends up, but they are a decent guide.

Processing is very simple: you just use the "Color Sensitivity" mode of Capture One’s Black & White tool. This is a classic channel mixer, but one in which the channels have a dramatically different effect to on a full-spectrum original. Red affects sky shadows and midtones. Yellow controls the sky and reflected highlights. Blue controls the tone of foliage with some effect from Cyan. Counter-intuitively the green and magenta mixers have almost no effect whatsoever! I now have a sensible starting point for images like the above set up as a preset, but the sliders will usually need a tweak to get the tonal balance right, and some global levels and curves tweaks may also sometimes be needed.

I’m very pleased with the image quality. The image is lower resolution than some of my others for two practical reasons: the GF3 only has a 12MP sensor, and that an older design, and infrared light simply can’t resolve the same detail as blue with its much shorter wavelengths. In practice, however, neither of these are an issue. I bought the camera after reading an article by Ctein, who complained about "hot spotting" through some Micro Four Thirds lenses. I’ll accept that I’m not as critical as he is, but I’m extremely pleased with the results from the inexpensive Panasonic 14-42mm power zoom lens. There’s slightly more visible vignetting at the widest setting than in a colour picture, but otherwise I can’t see much wrong with this.

Now I just need some more "graphic vegetation"!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/into-the-infrared/feed/0Edge of Silencehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/edge-of-silence/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/edge-of-silence/#respondFri, 29 May 2015 21:48:22 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1576Continue reading →]]>We’ve just finished our 30th anniversary viewing of Edge of Darkness. I must now have seen the series at least 10 times, but in this case familiarity breeds respect. Like the best Shakespeare play or Verdi opera the series rewards repeated study, and every time we notice something new about the story, the production, or both.

I’ve noticed before how Edge of Darkness has such an unforced pace, with space for the actors just to act. This time I consciously observed the phenomenon. In the first episode, after Emma’s death, there’s a period of about 20 minutes where Craven is grieving and the other policemen trying to help him deal with it. There are perhaps half a dozen lines of dialogue. In the 5th episode, where Craven and Jedburgh break into Northmoor, there are no more than a couple of hundred lines of dialogue in total. In over 50 minutes. Yet in both cases your attention is held completely, and there’s never a sense that the pace should be even slightly quicker.

This was also the first time I had watched it on a big screen, but at its original 3×4 aspect ratio. Now 3×4, especially with 1980s slightly grainy video, doesn’t suit expansive vistas or dramatic special effects. It does suit portraits, much better than wider presentations. What I noticed on this viewing was how Martin Campbell and his team really exploit this, filling the screen from corner to corner with one or two faces. It was powerful in the days of 20" TVs, but really punches through on a 50" set.

Yet again our understanding of the politics and personalities deepened. When I first saw the series, I wasn’t sure that Harcourt and Pendleton were the good guys. This time, I started to appreciate some glimmers of humanity in Grogan, the chief villain. Maybe by the 20th viewing we’ll understand him as well.

It’s slightly odd that the BBC chose to repeat the series last year rather than on this anniversary. 30 years on Edge of Darkness is still unmatched as a conspiracy thriller, and deserves some celebration.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/edge-of-silence/feed/0Lotsa Changes!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/lotsa-changes/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/lotsa-changes/#respondThu, 14 May 2015 14:18:59 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1550Continue reading →]]>I’ve taken advantage of a bit of spare time to sort out our web sites, and in particular fix a few things which didn’t work quite right after our enforced emergency upgrade in February.

Hopefully you should see everything working properly now, but let me know if not.

AgileArchitect.org has had the most significant makeover, and is now fully responsive and mobile-friendly, just like our other sites.

Happy browsing!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/lotsa-changes/feed/0A Visitationhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/a-visitation/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/a-visitation/#respondSun, 10 May 2015 06:26:22 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1543Continue reading →]]>Great excitement chez nous last night. The security lights went on and we spotted not one but two hedgehogs snuffling around in the courtyard. Fortunately they stayed round long enough to get a few photos.

The security light provided good illumination, but kept on switching off (as it’s supposed to), so Frances ran around to wave at it and switch it back on. What was very funny was that each time the light came on, the hedgehogs froze mid-snuffle for about 10 seconds, just as portrayed in Over the Hedge, but which we’d never seen before in reality.

I spotted another one later on when I got up for a glass of water, so hopefully these welcome visitors will become a regular feature.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/a-visitation/feed/0A Failure of Curationhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/a-failure-of-curation/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/a-failure-of-curation/#respondSun, 05 Apr 2015 14:27:03 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1537Continue reading →]]>We visit a lot of photography exhibitions. The majority are inspiring or thought-provoking, and well worth the effort of the photographers, the presenters, and the attendees.

Along the way there has been the odd disappointment: sometimes we just don’t connect with the material, on other occasions we have felt that the volume or quality of the work hasn’t justified a high entrance cost. On one occasion an exhibition presented such a biased left-wing viewpoint that I felt desperate for the injection of some balance.

However today we had a new experience – an exhibition based on a good volume of high quality work, at a great location, which failed abysmally due to comprehensive incompetence in curation.

The offending exhibition was Human Rights, Human Wrongs at The Photographers Gallery. The piece was meant to chart the path of human rights since the Universal Declaration in the 1940s, drawing from a large archive of reportage. It failed.

The main problem was the complete absence of any organising principle. With the occasional exception of sequential shots of the same event, there was no attempt to group items by location, subject, date or photographer. It was just a confusing "bunch of stuff". At times the confusion seemed almost wilful – two related, well explained pictures from Vietnam together on a wall, but separated by a wholly unrelated picture from Chad.

The curators provided copies of original notes on some of the images, but these were presented in tiny type well below the average eye line, underneath the photos. To ensure there was no chance of even this being readable the images had thick frames spotlit from above, so half of each caption was adequately lit, and half in deep shadow. In any event there was no attempt to present any context, explanation or information about what happened next – unless the photographer wrote this on the back of the original you were on your own.

The caption typist had clearly lost the will to live with the highly structured but low information content approach, and even managed to mis-spell "Untitled".

Even the choice of content felt random. There were lots of good pictures of American Civil Rights events in the 1960s. Fine. Plenty of pictures of Martin Luther King Jnr, a portrait of JFK and a nice picture of Nixon with Coretta King. Good. But why have a blurry picture of Lee Harvey Oswald but none of Johnson, Bobby Kennedy or Malcolm X?

The supposed light relief afterwards, pictures of horses on the American prairies, didn’t work either, with captions in about 8pt type several feet away from the related shot, and the beautiful animals captured against wilfully ugly backgrounds.

The Photographers Gallery has a great new location, but they don’t seem to know what to do with it. This is an abuse of our human right to a decent exhibition!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/a-failure-of-curation/feed/0Normal Service Being Resumedhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/normal-service-being-resumed/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/normal-service-being-resumed/#respondSat, 28 Feb 2015 09:02:18 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1529Continue reading →]]>Apologies to all for the interruption to our websites and email service around last weekend. My server was hacked and used to launch DDoS attacks, and had to be taken offline and rebuilt with the latest software versions. Fortunately I only really use it to host the websites and our email endpoint, so it was a nuisance rather than a disaster. There’s a lesson that all servers need to be constantly patched and updated, and I’ll now have to either work out how to do this in the Linux environment, or switch to Windows which I understand a bit better.

If you did have an email bounced, please feel free to re-send. And if you do meet someone who hacks other people’s servers, feel free to give him a kick for me.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/normal-service-being-resumed/feed/0Positively On Fire…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/positively-on-fire/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/positively-on-fire/#respondMon, 12 Jan 2015 06:41:56 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1514Continue reading →]]>Apologies, my first blog post of the New Year really should have wished you all the very best for 2015. Please accept this as a pseudo-first post, with said wishes.

I also just wanted to post this shot from yesterday. A low winter sun, passing clouds and unusually upright pampas grass for January combined to generate this remarkable light pattern. As we were just going out of the door this is a grab shot taken leaning out of the bedroom window, but I think the result worked. I hope it’s an omen for things being “on fire” (in a good way) in 2015.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/positively-on-fire/feed/0Monochrome, Sort Of…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/monochrome-sort-of/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/monochrome-sort-of/#respondWed, 07 Jan 2015 06:56:54 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1510Continue reading →]]>I’m making use of my new Windows MacBook to catch up with photo processing, including a few shots from our trip to Barbados last year. One of the things I particularly love about the Caribbean are the splashes of colour from the various flora, and I’ve noticed that an increasing proportion of my photos are nice flowers.

This display appealed because it’s all related shades of red, pink and brown. This makes it almost a “monochrome”, even though there’s no black, white or grey in sight!

Barbados has an interesting little tradition that people throw open some of the larger or historically significant private houses to visitors a few days each year. Clifton Hall House had fallen into disrepair, but was recently bought up and renovated by a Massimo Franchi, an international lawyer and sports agent (Scottish, despite the Italian name). He personally made us very welcome, and after our tour of the house we spent a happy hour on the veranda discussing our shared interests, plumbing and DIY with him! Nice bloke, lovely house.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2015/monochrome-sort-of/feed/0More Panoramas!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/more-panoramas/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/more-panoramas/#respondWed, 17 Dec 2014 06:54:15 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1504Continue reading →]]>The astute among you will have noticed that I place a random panorama in the masthead of all my web site pages. I’ve just refreshed my album with a number of new images, which I hope you’ll enjoy.
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/more-panoramas/feed/0Waterfall in the Rainhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/waterfall-in-the-rain/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/waterfall-in-the-rain/#respondMon, 24 Nov 2014 07:35:28 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1486Continue reading →]]>Day 9

We awake to something we haven’t seen so far this trip – rain. Fortunately I’m a great believer that bad weather makes good photographs, so hopefully we’ll still enjoy the day. We get back on the Parkway and head north. Some of the views are almost invisible behind the rain and cloud, but others are very dramatic with rising mist. We seem to have found an area where the Autumn colour is better advanced, which also makes a positive difference.

At lunchtime we hike down from the road to the Crabtree Falls, one of the most dramatic waterfalls in this part of the world, and still photo-worthy even at this time of the year. The infrared camera renders the somewhat moody scene beautifully. On the way back the rain starts again and I get a lot of complaints…

Late lunch / early dinner makes up for this. We each have a “Philly” sandwich served with a baked sweet potato with cinnamon. Absolutely sublime.

We motor quickly through some very interesting looking scenery on our way to the overnight stop at Boone (named for the famous trapper), but we have a whole day in the area tomorrow so things look promising.

After last night’s “oh bugger” moment we establish that the “right” Lynchburg is only about 60 miles south of Nashville and therefore a manageable diversion. The drive down is very pleasant, and the tour interesting, although our guide has a very thick accent and also assumes we understand the basics of the whiskey-making process, either of which might be a challenge for other attendees. The most impressive aspect is the sheer industrial scale of production tucked into a tiny site in Tennessee.

Through the remainder of the day Tennessee proves itself a bit odd. First although Moore County houses one of the world’s most famous distilleries, they never quite got around to repealing Prohibition, so you can’t actually buy a drink. Our long drive over to the mountains goes quite smoothly, except halfway across there’s a change of time zone, and we lose an hour mid-state.

The gateway area for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park doesn’t resemble any other park gateway we’ve seen. Pigeon Forge at the bottom of the hill is like a mini Las Vegas. Frances is in shock at the concept of “The Hatfields and McCoys Dinner Experience – What All the Fuss Was About”. Bad taste or what? Gatlinburg at the top of the hill is marginally less tacky, but still more like Blackpool than Moab. The difference is probably that this is one of the Eastern USA’s main ski areas, but it’s not Cortina D’Ampezzo either!

Dinner holds another surprise, when the waiter refuses to serve me a beer without my passport. There wasn’t evidence of much ID checking in Beale Street Memphis or the Nashville Broadway. Explaining to him that I was old enough to drink beer before he was born doesn’t work. Fortunately Frances does have her passport and buys the beer for me, but he makes a big thing of checking the passport’s “expiration date”. Now it may be just me, but I fail to see the logic here. If Frances was old enough to drink beer when an ID was valid, she will presumably still be old enough if it has expired, that’s how time tends to work. I suppose there’s a small risk she is a Time Lord who has regenerated as a youngster like Matt Smith, but that’s a bit of an edge case…

The mountains beckon.

Day 6

A great night’s sleep, with the gentle rush of the river a soothing influence. We forgo the free breakfast at the hotel in favour of a much nicer one at Shoneys. We end up sharing a steak, eggs, bacon, sausage and toast, which seems to be the most reliable protein-centric option.

Then we’re off into the park. Fears of overwhelming traffic rapidly prove unfounded, and other users are never in the way on the roads or at stops. In addition everyone is very friendly and welcoming.

On a less positive note the park itself is a bit underwhelming essentially just a nice large green space with a high road through the middle, and nothing to compare with the genuine wonders of the more famous parks of the American West. We are a few weeks early for true Autumn colour and I might be making a different statement seeing the colour at its height.

Lunch is taken on the North side of the park, at Cherokee which is almost exactly what we expected Gatlinburg to be, a small quiet park gateway town. I have trout from the river, Frances has steak again.

In the afternoon we do a loop which purports to be a nature trail, but serves much better as a route between old dwellings near Gatlinburg. It’s lovely to see all the old homesteads, but sobering to think what a tough life they represent.

Then into town where we find a nice “back alley” bar with excellent sandwiches, nice beer (and no nonsense about ID) and yet more live music, this time a couple singing country classics. I have a pork sandwich with crisps which have been freshly re-fried. Gorgeous, but God knows what their calorific content is. Frances has steak, again. There’s no problem getting something to eat in Tennessee, but you do run the risk of too much of a good thing, and not enough variety overall.

The infrared-converted Panasonic GF3 comes into its own photographing the “smoky” mist which give the mountains their name, rendering it by default as a dramatic “sunset” picture, as above. This is probably my favourite version, but it also works well with the red and blue channels swapped to create a deep blue sky, or as a high contrast black and white version.

The drawback of being a stone’s throw from the airport is somewhat curtailed sleep as the flights start at about 4.30. Oh well…

First stop is a fabric shop on the outskirts where Frances buys some tassles, and we find by accident a flag shop where we manage to replace several of our older flags. Then we drive back to the centre via Summer Avenue which suddenly within one block transitions from tired commercial properties to very expensive-looking leafy suburbs.

In the centre we get coffee at the old and very elegant Peabody Hotel, whose central lounge fountain has been home to a bunch of ducks since an incident involving drunk hunters in the 1930s. The amount of duck merchandise is staggering, and their “walk of fame” outside has the stars’ names picked out with webbed footprints.

We decide to walk up to Sun Studios, and spend half an hour in the tiny recording room where so many great careers got started. The seven block walk in each direction probably just about cancels out the chocolate duck served with coffee. Then it’s back to the waterfront restaurant for a catfish sandwich for lunch – Memphis is seriously bad for the waistline!

The Cotton Museum is mis-named. It should be The Cotton and Blues Museum. It’s the only place in Memphis where we see an acknowledgement that it took musicians from Kent and Surrey to break down the barriers and make blues a universally-accessible artform.

A walk along a very quiet historic Main Street brings us to the Civil Rights Museum, which is closed. However we don’t have to go in to appreciate its location – the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King met his untimely end. So much for the promise about no more graves!

In general Memphis seems to be trying to quietly forget the days of discrimination, which seems a bit disingenuous, but maybe that’s what is required for a society to heal.

Dinner is taken at B B King’s Café, with a very good blues band who manage to make even Bill Withers songs sound like Cream. Throughout the meal Frances is occasionally squeaking as old cars turn into the pedestrian Beale Street, and we come out to a custom car show which fills the street for three blocks. Another “target rich environment”.

Another early start, but thanks to jet lag it’s not a major issue. Reagan National Airport turns out to be an architectural gem, and I get some great shots of the main hall. Operationally it’s not at quite the same level and US Airways first have a very confusing check-in process, then load us onto a bus which spends about half an hour circling the tarmac before delivering us to a very small plane. At least we’re well looked after by the lone stewardess, and promptly delivered to Memphis to start our tour in earnest.

Picking up the car proves slightly harder work than usual, but we are rewarded with a very dramatic Mustang convertible in powder blue. Annoyingly Ford have changed the shape of the boot yet again, so it is now physically impossible to fit two suitcases, and we will be doing the whole trip with one on the back seat. At least the hotel is only about 5 minutes drive and easily located.

After lunch the first target is Graceland. This proves to be rather smaller than expected and much less tacky than feared. Given Elvis’ slightly odd choices of decor and gadgets “elegant” may not be quite the right word, but neither is it completely wrong. You are left with the impression of a good man who liked his cars and gadgets but was otherwise of relatively simple tastes, and maybe just found the stress of constant performing a bit too much to cope with.

The Meditation Garden existed as such even before Elvis’ death, another indication of his sensibilities. Today it houses his grave and those of his parents and grandmother. I promise Frances “no more graves”, but some promises are harder to keep.

We haven’t really tuned into the rest of Memphis, but the lady at the Graceland tourist desk gives us directions to somewhere called Beale Street. The route involves driving along the recently renovated waterfront of the Mississippi River, and it’s great to see Ole Man River in reality after a lifetime of reading about it. We then walk into a wall of sound, with music of every sort coming out of every door. Beale Street turns out to be very much the tourist hub of Memphis, with lots of interesting shops, great signage, and all that music. In photography terms it’s what they call a “target rich environment”.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/jumpin/feed/0New Toy, New Challengeshttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/new-toy-new-challenges/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/new-toy-new-challenges/#respondWed, 10 Sep 2014 05:49:26 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1434Continue reading →]]>I’ve just got a new toy, a Panasonic GF3 converted for infrared imported from the USA. I went for the 590nm filter which admits a fair bit of the visual spectrum for the popular “goldie” look, and which makes sure that the cameras metering and display work fairly unaffected. The challenge is that to get the best results you have to swap the red and blue channels in processing, and the only software which does that straightforwardly is full PhotoShop, which I don’t and don’t want to use.

However, I realised that I can combine the camera with the Hoya R72 filter, which passes only true infrared light above 720nm wavelengths. This instantly converts the camera to a true infrared system with monochrome output, which Capture One handles perfectly. The above is an example of how this works.

I’m just at the start of learning this fascinating technology. I may find that it’s a gimmick which doesn’t justify carrying around the extra kit (although as the GF3 shares batteries and lenses with my GX7 this is minimal), but it may help to develop my vision in an interesting way. I’ll keep you posted…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/new-toy-new-challenges/feed/0Auto Everything? Not Quite…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/auto-everything-not-quite/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/auto-everything-not-quite/#respondSun, 07 Sep 2014 08:58:30 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1431Continue reading →]]>A friend asked me a few weeks ago about how I get such depth of colour in my images, and whether it was related to using automatic modes on my cameras. I had to explain about shooting RAW and correcting exposure and colour during development of the final image. That’s most of the answer, but as always it’s not quite as simple as that… Most of the time I do trust my cameras to do most of the work. Well over 95% of the time I shoot in either aperture priority mode (if the subject is not moving much) or shutter priority (if it is). I also use auto focus almost exclusively. I may move the focus point around a bit, but more often I tend to use the old SLR trick of focusing with the subject centred and the shutter button half pressed, and then recomposing.

I do adjust the camera’s auto exposure if necessary, usually by dialling in some exposure compensation, or adjusting the metering mode if the conditions are tricky (such as a concert), but I only worry if the automatic exposure is at least a stop out, assuming I can correct anything less in RAW development. However I’m finding that the metering of the latest Panasonics is accurate enough and the development latitude sufficient that the requirement to meddle is reducing. That said it’s very important to me to have a quick and easy adjustment Indepedent of the primary exposure controls, and annoying that Canon have inexplicably complicated this on the S120 compared with the S95.

I usually leave the camera to decide the ISO setting and white balance. With the latter it’s easy to correct the rare mistakes in RAW development, and too easy to get it wrong manually.

Very rarely I go manual, typically when I’m planning some sort of multi shot technique such as a stitched panorama and I need to be sure of consistent behaviour across the source images. It’s no longer required for HDR as all my cameras now do accurate, fast auto bracketing, but it can be required for panoramics or focus blending.

So on my Canon 7D and the 40D before it I had custom mode 3 set to “manual everything”, which worked well for panoramas from Italy to Iceland. It was perfectly possible to replicate the same on the Panasonic GX7 and GH4, so I did. Gotcha! Whereas “sunny” white balance is a good default for most outdoor photos on the Canons, for reasons I don’t entirely understand it’s not a good default choice on the Panasonics, and can produce some downright weird results. The above shot from Morocco required a lot of correction from an almost blue starting point, even though it was a bright sunny day.. The only thing I can think of is that the cameras are thrown by the effect of the polarising filter, but that’s not something I’ve seen before.

It looks like the best approach is to set auto white balance, but then apply a fixed manual value when generating the JPEGs to stitch. I may not yet be using “auto everything”, but it’s just come a step closer.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/auto-everything-not-quite/feed/0Looking Down Dark Alleys…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/looking-down-dark-alleys/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/looking-down-dark-alleys/#respondThu, 07 Aug 2014 05:57:43 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1425Continue reading →]]>I’m finally getting round to the first pass (!) on my Morocco photos. Work, my app development and the slow release of Capture One support for the Panasonic GX7 have all got in the way.

Here’s one from our second day in the Medina. We spent a lot of time peering down dark alleys, waiting to see if we could catch someone walking through a patch of light. It’s rather like shooting in a slot canyon – the position and the nature of the light changes incredibly quickly, and within about 10 minutes this light had disappeared. However while the light was right our patience was rewarded by the appearance of this nice Moroccan lady.

I continue to be amazed by the image quality of the GX7, and how Capture One handles it. Without adjustment this was almost a two-tone image of blown highlights and black shadows. Just using the “HDR” sliders of Capture One fully recovered almost all the highlight areas, and brought the detail in the shadows up to a level I like. That’s about all that was required.

More as they emerge from the shadows.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/looking-down-dark-alleys/feed/0All Change… (part 2)http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/all-change-part-2/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/all-change-part-2/#respondThu, 24 Jul 2014 15:48:44 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1418Continue reading →]]>My transition from Canon cameras to a lighter micro four thirds system is proceeding rapidly. In the last two weeks I’ve sold off the Canon 550D and Panasonic GH2, which both moved very quickly, my Panasonic flash and my CF cards, as everything is now SD based. Interestingly some Canon lenses are so far proving harder to shift. No-one loves the 15-85mm lens – I guess that like me others have uncovered its weaknesses including weight and uneven focus performance. Fortunately if all else fails the excellent Wex Photographic have offered me a trade in price which will cover a replacement flash for use with the Panasonics.

I will be sad to see the back of the Canon 10-22mm and 70-300mm IS lenses. As I’ve stated many times on this blog the latter was always a firm favourite: optically excellent, fast and accurate to focus and with very effective image stabilisation. Hopefully the second hand market shares my view.

Update: yes it does. My 7 year old 70-300mm sold within 3 hours of listing it! It’s just the 15-85mm which is unloved.

I do feel slightly ambivalent about moving from the Canon system: like the end of any lengthy relationship it’s difficult to be certain, and I’ve been a Canon SLR user for almost 30 years. There’s also nothing wrong with the Canon system per se, it just stopped being what I wanted to use. By pure coincidence on the day I sold the 550D The Online Photographer posted an article essentially reaching the same conclusion, that Canon products are no longer “fun”, and I have to concur. Canon have waited too long to replace their APS-C systems and weighted the originals too heavy.

At least from a high point of 7 cameras in the house I’m down to a slightly more sensible 3.

I have now had a chance to give the Panasonic GH4 a good workout on action photography, and it seems to deliver. It is blazingly fast, especially if you use the electronic shutter, but for best results you need to pay careful attention to shutter speed and auto focus mode. The “follow focus” mode is probably great for dogs and kids, but relatively slow. Continuous focus works well, and is probably good for trying to capture the peak action with a subject moving quickly towards you. However for most moving subjects the trick seems to be using single shot auto focus, tracking the subject and holding the button down. If there’s a lot of transverse movement then electronic shutter move will generate some “rolling shutter” effect, but nothing like the GX7.

Battery life is also impressive. I’ve taken about 1000 frames already, but I think I’m still on the first charge! I was getting through 3 batteries a day with the GX7 in Morocco.

I also love the fact that I have a genuine choice of lenses. The Lumix X G Vario 12-35mm f2.8 is without doubt the best standard zoom I have ever used, and only weighs about 300g, but the tiny 14-42mm power zoom loses little in effectiveness, and is not much heavier than a lens cap… I have now used my sale proceeds to order the X 35-100mm lens so I will also have the same choice in moderate telephoto.

I did toy with the idea of getting another tilt/shift lens, but instead I’ve invested in a copy of Helicon Focus, and I’m going to use focus blending when depth of field adjustments on a standard lens are simply not enough. The example above shows this should work well.

However, enough about kit. I now need to get out and make some images. If the Panasonic kit supports that as well as or better than its Canon predecessors I will be doing well.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/all-change-part-2/feed/0That’s Better!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/thats-better/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/thats-better/#respondWed, 09 Jul 2014 05:49:52 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1413Continue reading →]]>After the less than excellent photo on the previous post, here’s one I’m quite pleased with. We did a trip to The British Library and St. Pancras Station on New Year’s Eve. Here’s a fascinating detail from the great statue at the entrance to the station.
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/thats-better/feed/0All Change…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/all-change/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/all-change/#respondWed, 09 Jul 2014 05:22:13 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1411Continue reading →]]>Since I got the Panasonic GX7 I’ve been thinking about whether I could switch entirely from the big Canons to smaller cameras. Two things were stopping me: the GX7’s poor performance with action, and the fact that occasionally I need a more rugged camera, and neither of my existing Panasonics has any real sort of environmental protection. However with the announcement of the Panasonic GH4 there was a potential solution to both these challenges on the horizon, and I was gently thinking about getting one later in the year.

That was before last Friday, when out of the blue a close friend asked me “are you selling your Canon 7D”? He’d managed to dunk his in the Winter floods, and fancied buying a second-hand replacement of known provenance to tide him over until either the 7DII has arrived or the new Nikon D8100 has come down in price a bit. Of course, my answer had to be “yes”, especially when I established that Wex Photographic now have the GH4 as a stock item.

So on Sunday I started selling off my Canon kit, and on Monday the GH4 arrived. First impressions?

Same superb stills quality with static subjects as the GX7. Panasonic say that the two sensors are slightly different, and the RAW files are very slightly larger (by about 0.5% in each dimension) but I’m damned if I understand why as otherwise things seem to be identical.

It’s a nice size, very slightly larger than the GH2 and GX7, and fits very nicely in my hands.

It feels like a “professional” camera, capable of taking the odd splash or minor knock without problems. With the 12-35mm lens on it’s officially splashproof and dustproof, although just as with the 7D I’ll probably still put it in a rain cover in very harsh conditions. Also I suspect we won’t be auctioning off 50 year old examples held together with sticky tape, unlike a few Leicas of note…

It has a great electronic viewfinder, which really is not much different from using an optical one. However I’m not convinced that the colours in in-camera JPEGs completely match the viewfinders, which I thought was supposed to be one of their strengths.

The ergonomics and haptics are an improvement on the GH2 in some respects, but have ended up as a bit of an odd mix of physical switches, physical buttons and soft buttons or menu choices. Some are an odd compromise – there’s still a physical switch for focus mode, but you have to switch between “single shot” and “follow focus” in the menu system, which is very poor. Overall I much prefer the cleaner model of the GX7, but when I get the programmable elements of the GH4 set up to my satisfaction things may be better.

It’s too early to judge action performance. The frame rate seems to be as high as promised, but I haven’t yet been able to confirm whether the autofocus does the job. I tried shooting some dogs and rabbits last night, but in very low light, which meant even at ISO 6400 I was wide open on my lenses and at too low a shutter speed. The above was probably the best, but certainly won’t be submitted for any competitions. More practice required!

At least I won’t be struggling with software. After the long wait for GX7 Phase One delivered Capture One support on Monday, a few hours after the camera was in my hand. No complaints there…

Watch this space, and eBay if you want a lightly used GH2 or Canon 550D!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/all-change/feed/0Busy Bee…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/busy-bee/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/busy-bee/#respondThu, 29 May 2014 06:01:36 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1405Continue reading →]]>I’m sorry things have been quiet on the blogging front recently. I got back from my very restful holiday in Barbados expecting to take some time to find new work. Within two hours, before I could do anything, I had a query out of the blue from an ex-colleague I hadn’t seen for 10 years, and I was back under contract in a couple of days. (OK, technically that qualifies as “some time”, but you know what I mean…) I can’t say too much, but it’s a very exciting web- and service-based initiative in the automotive sector, which is new to me. It’s very interesting, but hard work between learning a new business, sorting out a problem project, and travelling backwards and forwards between the UK and Germany.

Hopefully normal service will be resumed when things settle down, but no sign yet!

Between last weekend’s storms, Frances and I managed to capitalise on the one sunny and dry session to visit Loseley Park. I took the Panasonic GX7 and the Lumix G Vario 12-35mm/F2.8 lens. This is far and away the best “normal” lens I have ever owned. Despite its relatively small size it really is just like a series of high quality prime lenses in a single box, sharp at all lengths and apertures and with vanishingly little aberration, even before processing. If and when I get a Panasonic GH4 the pairing will also provide me with a “rainproof” micro four thirds kit.

Photographing other busy bees at work requires a bit of patience, as they are constantly on the move, and I had my share of blank frames! However when I did get the subject in frame and in the focus zone, the hit rate was fairly high. Even though the 12-35mm is not a dedicated macro lens, you can see individual pollen grains on the bee’s back, which can’t be bad.

Enjoy these, and I hope you are busy enough, but not too busy.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/busy-bee/feed/0The Achilles Heelhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/the-achilles-heel/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/the-achilles-heel/#respondThu, 01 May 2014 11:11:42 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1402Continue reading →]]>As regular readers will know, I’ve been very impressed with the Panasonic GX7, which is a remarkably capable little camera. It did the bulk of the work on my Morocco trip, and I have seriously been considering whether we have got to the stage yet where I could operate with just a Panasonic system and get rid of the big Canon kit which works well but is so heavy. The main question mark has always been over the Panasonic system’s ability to handle action. Unfortunately I can now confirm that this is not something the GX7 does very well.

As a deliberate experiment I took the Panasonic GX7 and GH2 rather than the Canon 7D and 550D on our latest trip to Barbados. (I did take the Canon S120, which is turning out to be a very capable little camera, but that’s a separate story.) For pictures of buildings and flowers, the GX7 works well, and as already established, in very low light conditions or where a “small” camera has a practical or psychological advantage it betters the large cameras. Then we took it horse racing…

I was prepared for the moderate frame rate of around 5fps, which while slower than the Canon 7D is a reasonable match for most other cameras. The slight lag of the electronic viewfinder was also expected, but is not a major problem and would be mastered with a bit of practice.

Beyond that, however, the GX7 displays two very different failure modes depending on how you operate the shutter.

With the traditional mechanical shutter in use, the cycle is as follows. First the shutter closes, and the camera resets the sensor. Then the shutter opens for the required time, exposing the whole sensor. The shutter closes and the camera reads the sensor, then the shutter opens, and the camera updates the display/EVF, metering and focus. In burst mode as soon as everything is stable the cycle starts again. The trouble is that the autofocus is either insufficiently quick or insufficiently accurate to hold a moving target, and the “miss” rate is very high, exceeding 50% in my tests so far.

The GX7 also offers an electronic shutter mode, in which the mechanical shutter stays open, continuously driving the display, metering and autofocus, and to take a shot the camera resets the sensor, and reads the data after the required exposure time. For some purposes where the subject is essentially static, like an HDR bracket or trying to capture a changing portrait expression, this works very well. However with a moving subject it fails miserably. The problem is that the camera resets, exposes and reads the sensor progressively, starting from the top and working down, and takes over 1/10s to do so. If during this the subject has moved you get an effect I have termed “The Lartigue” as it resembles the “leaning back” look common in action photos from Jaques Lartigue and other early 20th century pioneers of motion photography. Track the subject, which is something Lartigue and his contemporaries could not easily do, and the result is a “Reverse Lartigue” – see example above.

Oh well… I always knew that this would be a stretch, and taking the GX7 to a sporting event was a deliberate experiment with some risk of failure. Also I’m setting the bar very high by comparing with a Canon 7D, which despite being a five year old design is still near the top of the class in this respect. I did get a few decent shots, but the conclusion is that the 7D stays for now, and gets an outing at least when I know the subject is action. What will be very interesting is to repeat the experiment with the new Panasonic GH4. Watch this space…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/the-achilles-heel/feed/0Getting Ahead of the Curve – Final Update?http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/getting-ahead-of-the-curve-final-update/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/getting-ahead-of-the-curve-final-update/#respondTue, 01 Apr 2014 16:40:43 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1382Continue reading →]]>When I purchased my Panasonic GX7 on the day of release, I did expect there to be a slight delay in getting software support (see here), but I got frustrated when no fewer than three versions of Capture One came and went without it.

However my patience has finally been rewarded with V7.2.1. This not only delivers full support for the GX7, but has also dramatically upgraded the support for my equally new Canon S120. This produces RAW files which at the wide end of the zoom have very dramatic geometric distortion, so strong it was impossible to correct manually, but in the new version the built-in C1 support corrects them perfectly, with neither geometric nor chromatic aberration evident even at pixel peeping levels.

While I’m still slightly peeved about the time it took (a grand total of 6 months!), I’m very impressed with the results.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/getting-ahead-of-the-curve-final-update/feed/0That Was Quick…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/that-was-quick/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/that-was-quick/#respondSat, 01 Mar 2014 08:42:45 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1368Continue reading →]]>OK, here’s the black and white version. A couple of interesting challenges here. To get enough contrast I had to take the yellow component in the mix right down to zero, and also go for a much “darker” look overall (as otherwise the white patches of lichen on the trees were overwhelming). What do you think?
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/that-was-quick/feed/0Remember When There Was Something Called Dark and You Couldn’t Make Photographs?http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/remember-when-there-was-something-called-dark-and-you-couldnt-make-photographs/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/remember-when-there-was-something-called-dark-and-you-couldnt-make-photographs/#respondSat, 01 Mar 2014 07:45:32 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1364Continue reading →]]>Sadly, this isn’t my own quote, but it is very apposite. I decided to break my journey back from Kingston Lacy in Salisbury, and took a quick walk before dinner down from my hotel (apparently the longest continuously operating hostelry in the world!) to the cathedral. I popped the Panasonic GX7 with its new 12-35mm lens over my shoulder, and I’m glad I did. The cathedral is floodlit, although not to excess, and I caught it when there was just a hint of blue left in the rapidly darkening night sky.

In the past a photo like the above could only have been created with a tripod and patience. No more. The GX7 produces fine quality at ISO 3200,and the stabilisation of the lens allows it to be hand-held down to about 1/10. I didn’t even have to exploit the f/2.8 aperture, which would have given me another stop. Essentially we have now reached the point where if I can see something, my newer cameras can photograph it.

Next time, photography through the lens cap!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/remember-when-there-was-something-called-dark-and-you-couldnt-make-photographs/feed/0Ansel Would Be Proud?http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/ansel-would-be-proud/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/ansel-would-be-proud/#respondSat, 01 Mar 2014 07:24:24 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1365Continue reading →]]>I had a day off today from work, chasing contracts and Android development, to focus on photography and writing. The core was a workshop with the famous and venerable landscape photographer Charlie Waite, at the even more famous and venerable Beech Avenue near Kingston Lacy.

It was a good group, and we had an excellent day of discussion about photography, how we do it, why we do it, and what we need to improve. Unfortunately as for so many others this Winter the weather let us down, and we managed a grand total of about one hour on location, getting buffeted by strong winds, pelted by rain and battling a combination of ambient temperature and wind chill which together netted out the wrong side of freezing. I ended up using the same gear and clothing as I was using at the top of Kerlingfjotll (“Bitch Mountain”) in Iceland – not what I was expecting from the Dorset Beech Avenue.

I went prepared for intensive activity, with a total of about 48GB storage across two cameras, or enough for well over 1500 shots. I took… 34, including about half a dozen “technical test shots”. Ansel Adams used to complain that 35mm film photography was in danger of leading to an excess of quantity over quality of photography. Had he survived to see digital, while he would undoubtedly have mastered the technology quickly and effectively himself, his concerns about quality vs quantity would have multiplied manifold! At least today I kept the quantity down.

Quality did suffer a bit. I had hoped after Charlie’s pep talk to go out with camera tripod mounted and take a slow, considered approach to photographing the avenue. Instead i took a series of fairly hurried “grap shots” mopping everything down between shots. Inevitably the rain has also reduced contrast and clarity of the trees in the distance.

However I’m not unhappy with this shot. The composition is exactly what I wanted, I like the tonal range (although ironically I’ve actually toned down the saturation!), and clarity is OK, if not perfect. I might try a black and white version as well…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2014/ansel-would-be-proud/feed/0Getting Ahead of the Curve – Updatehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/getting-ahead-of-the-curve-update/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/getting-ahead-of-the-curve-update/#respondTue, 24 Dec 2013 21:18:00 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1356Continue reading →]]>When I bought the Panasonic GX7 on the day of release I realised there might be a short delay before it was fully supported by third party software. A few weeks on and there was support from Adobe and some unexpected sources, but no sign from Phase One. Fortunately the in-camera JPEGs are absolutely excellent and I cheerfully blazed away in Morocco while waiting patiently.

Come December my patience was wearing thinner, with three months’ RAW files ready and others stacking up. I took to checking daily for new Capture One updates, and was finally rewarded on Monday by the release of v7.1.6. That was the first good news.

To my frustration, the release notes stated that the GX7 support was “provisional”, although Phase One had managed to deliver full support for pretty much every other recent new camera. The primary limitation seems to be the lack of any lens correction, even manual, which is a rather substantial issue for a micro four thirds camera. Any shots taken with the wide ends of my zooms will have to wait… That’s the bad news.

</moan>

There is, however, some really good news. The image quality is simply superb, much better than I have been able to achieve with Adobe Camera Raw, and a dramatic improvement on all my other cameras at high ISO. Images are essentially noise-free at ISO 1600, and not much worse at ISO 3200, suggesting I was unnecessarily pessimistic limiting myself to 1600 in Morocco. At ISO 6400 there’s a bit of noise, but essentially correctable. I would probably choose to use a lower sensitivity for something critical, but for general use it’s absolutely fine, as long as I don’t try to pull the shadow exposure too far. I might even be brave enough to use 12800 in a pinch.

So my Christmas present from Phase One may be arriving in instalments, but it’s looking really good for the latest compact system cameras.

The above shot gives you an idea of what can be achieved, and is also suitably seasonal. My very best wishes to all my readers, and hope that we all have a successful and satisfying 2014.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/getting-ahead-of-the-curve-update/feed/0Morocco – Did I Need Two Camera Systems?http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/morocco-did-i-need-two-camera-systems/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/morocco-did-i-need-two-camera-systems/#respondThu, 19 Dec 2013 09:41:25 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1353Continue reading →]]>Here’s the list of the main kit I took to Morocco:

Canon 7D body

Canon 550D body

Canon lenses: 15-85mm, 17-85mm, 70-300mm, 10-22mm (The 550D and 17-85 were basically “spares”, although both got a small amount of use.)

Polarising filters in each of the following sizes, and protective UV filters in almost all: 37mm, 46mm, 52mm, 58mm, 67mm, 72mm, 77mm

Lens hoods for most, but not all of the lenses

Remotes for both systems, including an intervalometer for the Canons (ironically the GX7 has one built in) and an adapter cable because the Canons have different connectors

Shoulder bag for around town and tiny bag for GX7 as well as my large backpack for travelling and the desert trip

While I liked the flexibility of this selection, I would be the first to admit that it meant carrying more than ideal in terms of both weight and value. It’s also almost in danger of becoming my standard kit for any trip, which is vaguely ridiculous. However it’s not obvious how or even whether I should pare it down for a future similar trip.

Firstly, apart from the spare Micro Four Thirds normal zoom, each lens and all three bodies saw real use (although I could realistically have substituted either of the others for the only outing of the 550D and 17-85mm lens). However following my experiences in Cuba and Iceland I wouldn’t forego carrying a spare body for the “main” camera and a spare mid-range zoom, although by carrying two different “systems” I doubled up both elements on this trip.

I don’t think there’s a single shot I took with either Canon I couldn’t have taken with the GX7, but that might not have been true if there was more fast action, and I might have got one or two shots I missed if I had had the 7D with its fast performance and 6X standard zoom ready in my hand. The Canon lenses are definitely a bit more resistant to flare, but in most cases I didn’t find that an insuperable problem with the MFT kit. Whether the Panasonic batteries would have lasted the desert trip and frozen night shoots is an unknown, but the third party batteries for the Canon weren’t great either.

Conversely I definitely got several shots on the GX7 which exploited the GX7’s unobtrusive nature, silent operation, the wide aperture of the Olympus f/2 lens or the remarkable reach of my new 100-300mm lens. These I might not have got with the Canon.

As I’ve said before, the Panasonic GX7 is the ideal camera for wandering around in towns, or exploring cramped interiors like those of the older buildings in Morocco. I’ve read other reviews which liken it to a smaller Leica rangefinder, and if that’s true then I finally “get” the rangefinder aesthetic. Where it scores over other such cameras is that it is not limited to one mode, but moves seamlessly from point and shoot (composing on the rear display), or “twin lens reflex” (using the same panel tilted), through rangefinder and on to a high performance shooting mode best described as “mini DSLR”. I find myself increasingly using all those modes, whereas with my previous cameras live view has been only for situations where I genuinely can’t reach the viewfinder.

I also find myself using the multiple aspect ratios as a positive composition aid, and the live preview as a visual exposure guide in a way I have not done before.

The sheer physical size has an impact on subjects. In our financial argument with the snake charmers one of them went through our group saying “you have big camera, you have big camera…”. He got to me, raised his finger, and stopped dead. Something similar happened a couple of times.

Could I have managed with just the Canon kit? Probably, but I would have had to work harder, both physically and to get what I wanted from some of the subjects.

Could I have managed with just the Panasonic (with my GH2 as “spare body”)? Yes, but I would have been a lot more nervous about the desert trip. I happily sat on camel back with the 7D bouncing in the saddle. At one point I dropped the 7D in the sand from several feet up, but just dusted it off and carried on. That might have been a more serious incident with the smaller cameras.

The solution might be to extend my micro four thirds kit with a weatherproof lens and body, such as the Panasonic GH3 and 12-35mm lens. Morocco wasn’t that hard on kit, although I didn’t know this beforehand, and that pairing would have managed fine in the desert.

Unfortunately the harshness of a location is something which is hard to predict on a first visit: Iceland was much harder on equipment and even some of my heavyweight Canon gear did not survive – the wear on smaller cameras would probably have been unacceptable.

The alternative view (although it’s from Kirk Tuck, a man who changes his cameras almost as often as I change my socks) is that we just accept that the cost of smaller, lighter kit is that we wear it out more quickly, and that this fits with the gradual obsolescence due to technical advances. While I partly buy this argument, I’m not keen to completely wreck and write off equipment, and it brings the risk of a trip where both the primary and spare equipment die before the end. That would be a real disaster.

So for now I have moved one step closer to travelling light (or at least light-er). For trips to “easy” destinations I may be prepared to go MFT-only. For more physically challenging locations, if there will be a lot of fast action, or if I need the visual impact of a “big” camera I take the Canons. For trips with a mix of both, I remain a beast of burden.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/morocco-did-i-need-two-camera-systems/feed/0Camera Historyhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/camera-history/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/camera-history/#respondTue, 03 Dec 2013 07:40:48 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1348Continue reading →]]>While my memory works tolerably well, and as I suspect I’m about to enter one of my periodic phases of camera replacement, I thought it would be interesting to write up a list of the cameras I have owned and how my photographic capabilities (but not necessarily my skills) have evolved with them. Read the article here.
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/camera-history/feed/0Morocco – What Worked and What Didn’thttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/morocco-what-worked-and-what-didnt/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/morocco-what-worked-and-what-didnt/#respondSun, 01 Dec 2013 07:41:31 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1344Continue reading →]]>As a tail piece to my Morocco blog, and as a service to anyone else considering a photo trip there, here are a few notes on what worked, what didn’t, and how you might increase your own chance of a successful outcome.

What Worked…

This was the second trip I have done with Lee Frost of Photo Adventures (who also ran my Cuba expedition). He works hard to make sure you have a good time, with a balanced itinerary which gets you and your camera in front of lots of great subjects with a good chance of decent light. He’s also a fun and inspiring group leader and tutor. You just have to learn that he will always want “just one more shot” when the customers have all had their fill! Highly recommended.

Lee partners with someone who manages the local logistics, and on this occasion it was his regular co-leader in Morocco, Carolyn Hunt of Journeys Elite. Carolyn is a specialist in tailor-made Moroccan trips, and this reflected in faultless arrangements plus the ability to smoothly handle minor problems and variations. She was also a fun member of the group, and as a photographer in her own right understood our requirements well. Another strong recommendation.

Plumbing and toilets! I had some concern that toilet facilities might be a challenge, but completely needlessly. The Moroccans have a simple system that pretty much every cafe, hotel or other roadside stop has toilets which are freely available to use for a small donation from non-customers. Pretty much without exception these were in good order and spotlessly clean, often well above the standard of the British equivalent. (However, see note about showers in the “didn’t” section…)

The roads were all pretty good, well surfaced and with a capacity reasonably matched to the traffic (although I accept that I was seeing this in the low season). However it has to be observed that Moroccan drivers have a nasty habit of not worrying about which side of the road they use until an impact is imminent, and cyclists and moped riders are as much a menace as anywhere. While I would have been fairly comfortable driving outside Marrakech, I couldn’t have coped with either the poor signage in the larger towns, frequently only in Arabic, or the amazingly frequent speed traps and police checkpoints. Fortunately we had an excellent driver, Mohammed, who took all this in his stride, and was always happy to help in any way.

Morocco has very good telecoms services. My mobile worked everywhere, even in the middle of the desert. There was also free Wifi at almost every stop, although the speed varied substantially (and was not obviously correlated to distance from a major centre). I did have an odd problem that I couldn’t reliably send mail via my own SMTP server, but webmail worked fine.

It makes a welcome change to report that all my camera kit worked reliably and survived, although my Canon gear is going to need a very careful clean after the desert trek (and see note below about batteries).

I’m extremely pleased with the Panasonic GX7. This is the perfect camera for wandering around towns, whether they are packed or abandoned, and for taking high quality photos without the visible and audible imposition of a full-sized DSLR. It also makes brilliant high definition video, even in minimal light. At its limits it may not quite match the speed or the stabilisation of the Canon 7D, but I was not often left wanting. I do need to confirm its higher-ISO capabilities when Capture One support arrives, but the initial indications are good.

I’m also very pleased with the Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm lens. This fist-sized lens is pin-sharp and can pull details out of scenes which would demand major cropping with even huge lenses on full frame or APS-C cameras. It also stabilises well to cope in quite limited light. I now have hand held shots of the Moon filling half the frame, revealing detail which my eyes alone have never seen.

All that said, my Canons also had a key role. It was absolutely the right choice to take the 7D into the desert, where its heavier build and better sealing reduced worries substantially. If your trip covers a similar range you may also need a composite solution. I also used every lens except the “emergency spare” Panasonic 14-42mm zoom. I’m going to write a separate blog about how I might do a similar trip with a single camera system.

Much of the photography was in dark alleys or “open interiors”. This is very similar to outdoor photography in slot canyons and similar locations. Light is often best in the middle of the day, but changes rapidly. Inside the Kasbahs it takes on wonderful warm colours after being reflected from different surfaces. However overall light levels will often be low, and be prepared for very high dynamic ranges if you have a mixture of direct and indirect light. I got good use from my wide angle fast prime lens (f/2, 24mm-e), and took HDR bracket sets in several cases.

Morocco is dusty, and even out of the desert keeping optics clean is a challenge. My solution is a sacrificial UV filter for every lens, which I am prepared to replace after the trip. First indications are that I will have to do so for the two “standard zooms”, but the others will survive for another day. I have noticed a little vignetting on shots taken with the Canon 15-85mm when I had both UV and polarising filters in place, but this should be fairly easy to fix in the RAW processing, and it looks like the other lenses were fine. I also followed Lee’s suggestion to wrap cameras and lenses in plastic bags for the desert trip. There’s no way to tell how necessary this was, but it seems like a sensible precaution.

The food was a little repetitive and had a very high bread content (which I like but is not good for my waistline). However it was usually fresh, well cooked and tasty.

Cerberus, my invention to support multiple charging points from a single socket and cable worked very well, although I have realised that it can be further developed to also power my laptop from the same source. I have found a suitable C8 adapter for £3 on eBay, which will improve things further for the next trip.

For Geologging I now use Ultra GPS Logger by Holger Kasten. I have worked with the developer to optimise this excellent piece of software, and the results from this trip seem to be very effective.

French really is the best language with which to interact with the Moroccans. It helps to have the standard pleasantries in Arabic (yes, no, thank you etc.), and you occasionally find someone with usable English, but French is the right solution. Unfortunately mine was very rusty, and only started to work effectively at the end of the trip, but c’est la vie…

What Didn’t…

Showers – this is maybe slightly unkind, as every hotel had a device which produced a spray of water, usually at a reasonable temperature. Unfortunately almost without exception the mount on the wall was either absent, broken or, in an impressive display by the most expensive hotel, mounted so high that it both restricted the flow and ensured that what did come out flooded the entire room!

The haggling associated with some activities was unpleasant. It left a bad taste in the mouth to have a good shooting session and then end it with an argument about money. It doesn’t help that in the more popular areas some tourists and photographers are being more generous, which is pushing expectations up. Strangely this seemed to be much less of an issue south of the Atlas – whether this was due to a difference in culture or just less tourism is hard to judge.

If possible, try and agree a price for everything beforehand, and be prepared to walk away if the price is not right. I was successful in getting the price I wanted for all my souvenir purchases by this tactic.

Photographically I only had one problem. Both my spare Canon 7D battery and one I borrowed from Lee died very quickly in the cold of the desert nights. It might be significant that they were both cheap 3rd party ones – original Canon batteries and my Panasonic batteries for the GX7 seemed to fare better.

While you don’t go on a photographic holiday to lie in every morning, it would be nice to get the odd opportunity, and Lee usually obliges. However Morocco didn’t – 24×7 cockerels, mezzuins calling at 5 am and sub-zero temperatures all made their contribution! Oh well…

Conclusion

Morocco is an inspiring feast for the eyes, and a great photographic destination. With some planning, basic preparations and sensible precautions it’s not a hard one either. Enjoy it.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/morocco-what-worked-and-what-didnt/feed/0First Attempt at a Star Trailhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/first-attempt-at-a-star-trail/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/first-attempt-at-a-star-trail/#respondWed, 27 Nov 2013 06:54:16 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1341Continue reading →]]>I’ve tried processing my star trail shots from Morocco, and the results are better than I expected. The above is from my first night in the Erg Chebbi. With a full moon the foreground is perhaps a bit overexposed, but otherwise this has worked quite well. I was slightly off on my aim, but at least I got the pole star (just) in shot!
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/first-attempt-at-a-star-trail/feed/0Kicking Up Some Dusthttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/kicking-up-some-dust/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/kicking-up-some-dust/#respondFri, 15 Nov 2013 19:35:24 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1317Continue reading →]]>Still in Ait Ben Haddou, after a quick trip to the top of the hill and back we found ourselves back in the kasbah museum. Someone had the idea of kicking up some dust to illuminate the strong shaft of light coming in through one of the windows. We then spent a happy if dusty hour photographing this, and each other in a variety of lights and poses. Photographers are easy to keep amused!
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/kicking-up-some-dust/feed/0Exploring the Soukshttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/exploring-the-souks/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/exploring-the-souks/#respondTue, 12 Nov 2013 08:11:15 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1303Continue reading →]]>A gentle first morning, waiting for the others to arrive, but by lunchtime we were assembled. It definitely works well for me arriving slightly early and having time to sort myself out.

After introductions and a leisurely lunch, we got straight into the trip, with a visit to the Medina, the old centre of Marrakech. This is built around a large central square, which fills through the afternoon with a variety of vendors and performers, and then south of this you get into the souks, the warren of tiny streets filled with market stalls and busy artisans.

Everywhere you point your eye or your camera is a feast of visual opportunities – beautiful displays, bright colours, fascinating produce. The majority of the vendors seem happy or at least tolerant with photographers, although you have to respect those who say “no photos”, and you do hear the odd grumble about people who just want to take photos and not buy.

The Panasonic GX7 is an excellent choice for this sort of photography – it’s largely ignored if I have it in silent mode and with the tiny 14-42mm zoom, especially standing next to my co-venturers who are all using big Nikons or Canons, the latter with big white lenses. I’m still pretty unobtrusive (at least on the camera front, you know me) with the jewel-like 45-175mm lens, but the new 100-300mm does attract more attention. To offset this it’s a great lens, sharp, quick to focus and with wonderful contrast. The shot of the two drummers, above, was taken right across the square.

Also on the kit front, I’m very pleased with another little invention. “Cerberus” is a gadget which takes one power input and presents three “figure of eight” plugs, ideal for charging camera batteries and my Samsung phones. If you don’t get the reference, Cerberus was a three headed dog in Greek mythology.

The hotel room does have that stupid system where the power goes off when you leave, which makes charging during the evening a challenge. This is maybe more forgivable than in an expensive Midlands “business” hotel, but still annoying. (Update – you can get round it here by leaving your Costa points card in the slot – solved!)

It seems to be impossible to take a shower without completely flooding the bathroom. I have tried varying the relative position of the shower head, the little glass door, and me, but so far to no avail.

Oh well. Looking forward to another intensive day in the centre tomorrow.

In 2010 I wrote an article assessing what I thought was then missing from the typical DSLR, in the hope that it might contribute to improving digital cameras as fully functional tools for photographers. Three years on, and having just got my hands on an absolutely brand new, state of the art enthusiast’s camera in the form of the Panasonic GX7, I thought it might be interesting to see how far we’ve got.

What I didn’t realise in May 2010 was that I would replace both my DSLRs within a couple of months. The Canon 550D and 7D were solid direct updates which gave me the Canon 18MP sensor but scored a round 0 against my other targets. Since then, I have not had the slightest temptation to invest in another DSLR. Compact cameras, yes. Mirrorless, yes. DSLR, no.

My latest “DSLR” has no “R” (reflex mirror) at all. However it is a proper enthusiast/professional camera which matches the basic features of my Canons very well, and I believe more accurately represents where cameras of this class are going.

So bearing in mind that this is now in the context of a “DSLM”, how are we doing?

1. Expose To The Right Metering. Nope. Unless I’ve missed something, most cameras still just offer evaluative or spot auto-exposure aiming for an overall mid grey. Manual metering (or manual compensation of auto-exposure) is easier with electronic viewfinders and real-time histograms, but you still have to “drive”. 1/10

2. Optimisation for RAW Capture. Not really. A lot of the GX7’s clever post shooting options are JPEG-only, and the histogram at replay is still JPEG-based. Highest shooting speed is similar. 0/10

3. Built-in HDR Support. Sort of, but they’ve got it wrong. The GX7 can do HDR, combining three exposures in camera, but it’s again JPEG-only with fixed settings. Many other new cameras are similar. To add insult to injury the GX7 supports my preferred 2-stop exposure bracket in the “HDR” mode but I can’t set it manually! There are innovative ideas out there, like the 7D firmware hack which interpolates between alternative lines of the sensor captured at different ISOs, but nothing mainstream. 1/10

4. Bluetooth. Yes (makes a change :)). I got the technology slightly wrong – the camera world has gone for a WiFi based solution rather than Bluetooth. Otherwise what I wrote in 2010 could be the product description. I haven’t played with the solution for the GX7 yet, but it’s promising. 10/10?

5. Note Taking, Tagging and Content Enrichment. Limited. The GX7 has some annotation capabilities, but they are very limited, and, astonishingly, JPEG-only. Have these guys never heard of XMP files? I’m not aware of anything better in a dedicated camera, but the new Samsung Android-based one might move in the right direction. 1/10

6. Geotagging. Partial. Despite being a common feature on high-end “point and shoot” cameras, very few interchangeable lens models have GPS. The GX7 supports working with a phone as “teathered” GPS, much as per my 2010 concept, but it looks like it might be quite heavy on both phone and camera battery life. I really don’t understand why manufacturers don’t just build GPS in. Meanwhile I’ve got a good system which works for all my cameras using the phone to do a periodic log, and then tagging images using Geotag. 4/10

7. Focal Distance Read-out. No. 0/10

8. Hyperfocal Auto-Focus, and Automated Focus Bracketing. No. Newer cameras offer better support for manual focus, like focus peaking, and may be better at getting the maximum spread of subjects captured by auto focus, but still extend little control over the auto focus. 2/10

9. Intelligent Panorama and Multishot Support. Disappointingly no. The GX7 has panorama support, but it’s JPEG-only. See above for criticisms of its HDR and bracketing features. It does have the ability to tag related shots together, but you have to do it manually after shooting. At the very least it should be possible to automatically tag a bracketed set together, but no. 1/10

10. Tripod Sensitivity and Mirror Lock-Up. No, but getting less necessary. Going mirrorless removes the need for mirror lock-up, and stabilisation mechanisms are getting progressively more tolerant. However the GX7 manual still recommends you manually switch stabilisation off when the camera is on a tripod. Why can’t this be automated? 3/10

11. Camera Plate Anti-Rotation Hole. Again no, but the necessity is reducing. The problem gets less with lighter cameras, and I’ve invented my own solution by adapting a long tripod plate with a strategically-placed screw. 10/10 to Andrew, 2/10 to the camera manufacturers.

12. Just Add Lightness. Yes, albeit in an unexpected direction. Like for like things have actually got worse. My Canon 7D and 15-85mm lens is significantly heavier than the 40D and 17-85 it replaced. However I have cheerfully embraced the micro four thirds standard, and the cameras and lenses are both dramatically smaller and lighter. The trade-off is rather more fiddly handling – in many ways my ideal would be the same weight but a size larger – but I’m getting used to the new paradigm. 8/10

So, a grand total of 33/120 (if my optimism about the wifi solution is borne out in practice), or about 27%. The three year report reads “could try harder”.

Our long drive to Cortina D’Ampezzo started with a gentle drive on the old road to Trento, most remarkable for the very erratic roadsigns showing remaining distance. Warning: the value of your roadsigns may go up as well as down.

We had been lulled into a false sense of security, and the main road through Trento was truly ghastly – two lanes between high, unyielding steel barriers with zero room for manoeuvre either side. The signage was also appalling and we ended up having to cross back over the valley on very small local roads. Fortunately after that we turned off up into the hills and things improved.

Lunch was non-trivial. The first little restaurant we tried wasn’t doing food. The second had just been filled by about 100 cyclists. The third was actually the local gourmet restaurant, but they were happy to sell us two courses off their very interesting menu. The venison carpaccio was excellent!

Finally we were into the mountain drive. You can’t get to Cortina from the west without doing at least two 2000m+ passes, and our route included three. It was a stunning drive, but sadly on quite busy roads plagued by a menace of vast numbers of cyclists. We think it’s bad in Surrey…

We did like the various convoys of cars clearly being driven by owners clubs. The group of black Porsche Carrera GTs was impressive, but the best fun looked like the long convoy of original Fiat 500s, pooping horns at everyone they passed.

Coffee and strudel at a beautiful chalet café at the top of a pass truly excellent.

We finally arrived in Cortina about 6, and went out to look in shops and find dinner. Only when we got back did the hotel receptionist remind us we had paid for half board..

Note to self: if all else fails, read the instructions!

Food: 9/10Photography: 7/10Driving: 8/10 apart from the cyclists

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/through-the-dolomites/feed/0Buttons Or Switches? Buttons Are Better!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/buttons-or-switches-buttons-are-better/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/buttons-or-switches-buttons-are-better/#respondSun, 29 Sep 2013 07:29:15 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1283Continue reading →]]>My Canon 7D, like the 40D before it, has a feature I love and would find it hard to relinquish – three fully programmable custom modes, right on the mode dial. This makes it possible to sort out the myriad of settings in a flexible modern camera, and quickly get to a sensible starting point for a given type of shooting, and then, equally importantly, back to normal mode, without forgetting something important. My four main shooting modes are:

This works brilliantly. Unfortunately in Canon’s marketing strategy it’s classified as a “professional” feature and not available (or only partially implemented) on their lower models. When I found myself a couple of weeks ago at the top of a mountain in Cortina D’Ampezzo with the 550D in “landscape” mode and then saw some interesting birds of prey I couldn’t set up quickly enough to get the shots.

Now I have two “enthusiast” cameras from Panasonic, the GH2 and the new GX7. To Panasonic’s credit, both have three custom modes. (The GX7 actually has five, but three main ones.) However, comparison of the cameras has thrown up an interesting issue. Like the Canon 7D the GX7 sets everything via buttons (and the general-purpose dials). Almost all settings are gathered up and remembered for the custom modes, and then presented back to the user via the very informative viewfinder displays.

The GH2 is different. Many of its settings are controlled on dedicated mechanical switches. While this may appeal to some photographers, it actually causes me two problems. Firstly on such a tiny camera the graphics for the switch positions are so small I can’t always read them accurately with my glasses on (my norm out of doors). Worse, it means they can’t participate in the custom modes. You end up with a situation where either the switches setting is just not memorised, or the physical position and the memorised one are in conflict. I think Panasonic default to the former, but it’s not 100% clear.

I’m not advocating putting a camera’s settings all on the menu – that doesn’t work well either except on very small or much simpler cameras. The 7D and GX7 both have enough buttons to dedicate to the main settings, and that’s correct.

So I think there are three important lessons in ergonomic design of enthusiast/professional cameras:

Fully programmable custom modes are good, arguably essential,

Dedicated controls for the main settings are also required, but:

These should be buttons, not physical multi-position switches (see point 1)

And I suspect the GX7 is rapidly establishing itself as my preferred “carry round” camera. Now where’s the Capture One support?

Ghastly first hour driving from Bergamo to Breschia along the motorway, with heavy traffic, narrow lanes and roadworks frequently eliminating the minimal existing room for manoeuvre. We got off as soon as possible and drove gently towards Verona on the old road around the edge of Lake Garda. Slightly slower, but dramatically more pleasant.

This did mean approaching our hotel via the centre of the small town where it’s located. They really don’t expect you to do that, and signage was almost non-existant.

The name Hotel Antico Termine (=”old terminus”) summoned up an old station abandoned by Beeching-like cuts. The old station building was exactly as expected, but not the fact that the line is still very much in use, with high speed trains thundering through every few minutes. Oh well…

We still managed a relaxing afternoon by the pool, but it wasn’t quiet At tea time we set out for Verona, which turned out to be unexpectedly easy, between a very direct back road from our hotel, and a very good recommendation on car parks.

Excellent food at a gourmet restaurant recommended by Pauline, resplendent in the name Il Cenacolo, or “The Last Supper”.

Back at the hotel discovered some more failings. The rooms have mirrors and lights, unfortunately not in the same corners. One power socket does not suffice to charge a modern set of gadgets. Oh well…

Food: 9/10Roads: varied from 1/10 to 6/10Hotel: 3/10

Day 4

A surprisingly good night’s sleep, as our room was at the opposite end of the hotel from the railway, and we’re used to the odd train noise at night at home. However breakfast was a complete failure – we got down just after 9 and there was nothing left but cake! Not even a jug of water. There was one waitress trying to replenish supplies, but facing a full, large hotel just couldn’t keep up. We packed for the day, and headed into town, where the guy at the local sports bar had some warm pizettas and nice coffee. Then back into Verona.

We spent the day gently wandering around Verona’s shops and tourist centres. The ancient arena is fascinating, and we watched the stage crew installing the most enormous set for that evening’s performance of Aida. It might have been nice to try and get tickets, but the performances run until about midnight and we had a long drive the following day. Maybe next time.

I downloaded an excellent little book for the Kindle app on my phone entitled “Verona in One Day”. Despite the odd linguistic oddity (e.g. “ewe” for the second person) it did what it said on the tin and routed us round the “must dos” in an efficient way. Meanwhile Frances was doing well on shopping, although I have seen rugby scrums less energetic than the almost competitive purchasing going on at her favourite Italian blouse shop, where one woman attempted to grab a blouse Frances was already paying for! (Frances would not be beaten…)

Photography: 6/10Shopping for F: 7/10Shopping for A: 0/10 (almost no men’s stores, and nothing I was looking for)

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/from-bergamo-to-verona/feed/0Unexpected Supporthttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/unexpected-support/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/unexpected-support/#respondThu, 26 Sep 2013 06:06:16 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1280Continue reading →]]>Quick update on the support position for the Panasonic GX7. Phase One won’t commit themselves on Capture One support. It looks like the DNG converter is the best Adobe are going to do. I also haven’t yet managed to track down updates for some utilities like ExifTool, although they may exist.

Then last night as an idle thought I tried the RAW processing app I have on my Galaxy Note tablet, PhotoMate. It worked first time with the GX7 images! Nice.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/unexpected-support/feed/0Getting Ahead of the Curvehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/getting-ahead-of-the-curve/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/getting-ahead-of-the-curve/#respondSat, 21 Sep 2013 15:38:34 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1275Continue reading →]]>The majority of my camera purchases have been somewhat “behind the curve”, to the extent that I’ve purchased some just before the announcement of their replacement. However for my latest purchase I’ve gone right to the other end of the spectrum.

I placed my order for the Panasonic GX7 the day it was announced, and have been waiting only moderately patiently for it to turn up, which finally happened on Friday. Why? I think mainly because I have been suffering “new gadget withdrawal”, especially after the disappointment of my Olympus TG2 in April, and the lack of anything appealing from Canon.

It will now be interesting to see how long I have to wait for effective software support. Neither Capture One nor Adobe Camera Raw support it yet. The camera comes with a copy of the ghastly SilkyPix, but personally I’d rather have my teeth drilled. Fortunately Adobe have released some support via their DNG converter, and the in camera JPEGs are pretty good, so if I do get any really wonderful shots in the next month or so I’m not completely stuck.

First impressions? It’s very small, a definite size down from the GH2. I hold my larger cameras gripped firmly by the right hand with the left for additional support and zooming. The GH2 is a bit small for this, but it just about works. However the GX7 is too small altogether, and in addition the lug for the strap pokes out in just the wrong place to dig into the soft part of my hand. I hold the diminutive Canon S95 pinched between thumb and forefinger of my right hand for shooting, with the middle finger of the right hand providing bracing and operating the zoom. The GX7 is a bit big for this, but it may be the right approach, especially when I can work two handed. I’ll have to experiment.

Otherwise all the controls fall to hand and work quite intuitively – the provision of a front control wheel allowing the rear one to be dedicated to exposure adjustment suits my shooting style well and is a dramatic improvement over the GH2.

Based on early reviews I expected the viewfinder to be both larger and clearer than the GH2. I can’t see any real size difference, and it’s still a notch down from a large DSLR like the Canon 7D, but it is almost as clear as a good OVF. Another definite improvement.

Dislikes? Another bloody proprietary USB connector, and it’s different to the GH2. This just gets worse, and any designer who thinks it might be vaguely acceptable should be taken out and shot. This one is so unique that I can’t currently source a spare cable anywhere obvious! However, as it is compatible with the also-new LF1, I hope that it does at least represent the new standard for Panasonic…

Auto ISO is a bit surprising, defaulting rapidly to ISO 6400. It remains to be seen whether this can be justified by the quality of the raw files at that level – the JPEGs are OK, but maybe not as good as I hoped. — CORRECTION — I’ve just had a look at some of the in-camera JPEGs on the PC, and at ISO 3200 they are superb, at ISO 6400 they are really perfectly usable for anything short of fine art, and I would not be ashamed of the ISO 25600 results for an important “memory shot”. It remains to be seen what can be done with the RAW files, but so far, so good.

It looks like the GX7 shares one of the GH2’s failings – the apparent quality when reviewing images in camera is very misleading, and usually pessimistic, something my Canon’s don’t suffer from.

Overall a promising start. I’ll keep you posted.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/getting-ahead-of-the-curve/feed/0Back to Italy!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/back-to-italy/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/back-to-italy/#respondWed, 18 Sep 2013 17:33:01 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1273Continue reading →]]>For 2013 we’ve come back to Northern Italy. It’s a place we both love. Frances has long harboured a desire to visit Verona, and I wanted to revisit the Dolomites through which I took a fleeting drive many years ago, so we built both into a short loop from Milan.

Photographically this is an experiment, as for the first time for about 6 years I’m travelling without my full-sized Canon camera. Unfortunately the new Panasonic GX7 didn’t turn up in time, so the primary tool will be my existing micro four thirds GH2, with the Canon 550D as backup.

Day 1

Travel from Heathrow to Milan works flawlessly, a good start. Hire car is an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, with a 2l turbo diesel engine, which should be fun.

Short drive to Bergamo, and found hotel after minor panic. Parking in square behind hotel behind big doors in shopping arcade, just like in The Italian Job.

After settling into the hotel, we went to explore the old town of Bergamo Alto, (= “high”). There’s a funicular railway to the main town, and a second one which I thought went down the other side. Wrong. It’s a long way to the top of the hill on foot! However, had wonderful meal in restaurant recommended by our friends Pauline and Filece (who happens to be an Italian restauranteur).

Note to self: just because restaurant has Pizzeria in name doesn’t mean it is not posh and I shouldn’t arrive soaked after walking a mile up a steep hill!

Food: 9/10Hotel: 10/10Map reading of funicular railway: 1/10

Day 2

Further exploration of Bergamo. The low town is mainly big Lombardy bank offices and modern shops but worth a wander. Hotel Capello d’Oro is right in the centre. Bergamo Alto is the real tourist centre. We had a great lunch at the cafe run by the Bergamo micro brewery – excellent stouts and bitters completely contra to normal expectations of Italy.

We did all the normal tourist sights, then headed back to the hotel for a quiet coffee break. After that we headed out for dinner, to find the main square setting up for a big festival. Dinner, a club sandwich, was a bit disappointing, but the free rock concert was very good, we enjoyed watching the glamorous Italian ladies, and I got another pint of the local brew. Very good ice cream too.

Bergamo really is the home of beautiful people. We followed one young couple with three very young children, she in a spotless white linen dress, he in beige trousers and pale green polo shirt matching his suede shoes. I don’t have toddlers, but if I did I would probably go around in a level 4 hazmat suit, visor down.

Note to Italian musicians: pop music really does work better in English.

Beer: 9/10Music: 7/10Tourist stuff: 7/10Fashion: 10/10

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/back-to-italy/feed/0Capturing the Setting Sunhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/capturing-the-setting-sun/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/capturing-the-setting-sun/#respondThu, 25 Jul 2013 05:24:10 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1263Continue reading →]]>I’ve been catching up with some of the outstanding shots from our USA trip in 2012. One of the most successful days of the whole trip in photographic terms started in the fascinating Bisti Badlands, and ended on a short rim drive opposite Angel Peak. The scenery there would be stunning in many conditions, but we were treated to a dramatic sunset, with the sky on fire in certain directions.

Unfortunately, however, the best sky colour was opposite to the most dramatic scenery, which raised a dilemma about what to capture, and how. Most of the shots of the sunset itself are very nice, but have a relatively boring foreground. I’ve ended up favouring a couple of compromises.

The top shot is composed from 15 original frames, processed first in Capture One, then converted in Photomatix to 5 HDR images which were in turn stitched together in Pano Tools Assembler. The dynamic range across the scene was very high, and unfortunately the most interesting areas of the scene, the sunset and Angel Peak itself, are quite widely separated with the intermediate area somewhat less interesting. Although I’ve gone for a fairly “natural” look I’m not sure it doesn’t still look a bit “processed”.

The other compromise is a more traditional one. I call the image below “Tree on Fire”. It’s lit by the setting sun, but there’s not much colour in the sky. My first attempt at this, immediately after the trip, wasn’t very satisfactory as I ended up with a very oversaturated image which had insufficient detail and areas of blank colour. Re-processing in Capture One with its excellent highlight recovery I’ve managed to keep the deep red colour but get the detail of the tree back. A tighter crop than my first go has also improved matters. I’m now quite fond of this one.

Let me know what you think.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/capturing-the-setting-sun/feed/0Canon EOS 70D: Cynical, Substantial or Stepping Stone?http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/canon-eos-70d-cynical-substantial-or-stepping-stone/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/canon-eos-70d-cynical-substantial-or-stepping-stone/#respondThu, 04 Jul 2013 09:06:03 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1255Continue reading →]]>I am trying to work out what to make of the announcement of Canon’s new 70D. For those of you who haven’t caught up yet, Canon have finally, after four years, upgraded their APS-C sensor technology, yesterday announcing their new “prosumer” model. This will have a 20.2 MP sensor, whose main achievement is innovative autofocus technology in live view or movie mode.

In optical viewfinder mode the camera will fall back to an autofocus scheme based on (but slightly downgraded from) the 7D, and the announcements have been oddly quiet on the topics of image quality and dynamic range, arguably weak spots of the current 18MP sensors.

Now part of me says that any improvement is welcome. I had started mentally drafting a blog post worrying about whether Canon had effectively abandoned the middle ground – at least I don’t have to complete that. I had been waiting for a real upgrade to my 7D and 550D for so long I almost ordered the new camera as a reflex action. And the combination of a feature set similar to the 7D in a smaller and lighter chassis might hit a sweet spot for me in practical terms.

But apart from being lighter and newer, I’m not convinced the camera has anything to offer me. In terms of feature set, it’s still definitely a downgrade from the 7D, and a poor successor to the 40D and 50D. The new autofocus will probably be brilliant for video, but of limited value in the types of photography for which I use the 7D.

I don’t do much video, and on the rare occasion that I might my tool of choice is probably the Panasonic GH2. I do use Live View, but only really to extend my reach (e.g. shooting over crowds), for “sneaky shots” and the occasional tricky manual focus task. 90% or more of my 7D shots are through the viewfinder, ensuring visibility in all lights, and stability down to very low shutter speeds. I suspect the vast majority of stills photographers using Canon DSLRs are similar.

The new generation of Canon cameras may therefore be at best a “stopgap” upgrade, particularly if image quality is no better than now. However, I’m not completely despondent. I think the camera is actually something else altogether – it’s actually a “stepping stone” to something completely different.

Canon have “form” in this area. The 50D was a similar “stepping stone” between the excellent but relatively low-res 40D and the 7D/60D (high resolution, split by functionality). The 70D looks suspiciously like enabling technology for a whole new generation of Canon cameras.

The cameras I think, and really hope, will emerge will look like this:

An electronic viewfinder fully replacing the optical one

Body shape and size similar to the 7D/70D (which works very well), but hopefully much lighter because of all the moving parts which can be dumped. There will also be at least an XXXD version with its familar control set

APS-C sensor, hopefully with a step up in image quality and dynamic range from the 7D’s sensor

EF-S lens mount, so we can carry on with all the existing Canon glass

It’s important that the “full size” version is “full functionality” with dual axis level, multiple custom settings, built-in GPS etc. (7D replacement). If necessary for marketing purposes there can be a “reduced functionality” version like the 60D as well.

In other words, I’m now really waiting for something which looks like an APS-C, EF-S mount GH2/OMD. If they’d announced that yesterday I would have bought it sight unseen.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/canon-eos-70d-cynical-substantial-or-stepping-stone/feed/0Iceland Album Now Online!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/iceland-album-now-online/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/iceland-album-now-online/#respondWed, 19 Jun 2013 07:25:09 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1248Continue reading →]]>I’ve finally posted my complete album from the 2011 Iceland Trip! Please look inside and let me know what you think…
]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/iceland-album-now-online/feed/0A Delightful Little Surprisehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/a-delightful-little-surprise/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/a-delightful-little-surprise/#commentsThu, 13 Jun 2013 05:58:00 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1246Continue reading →]]>I’ve just finished processing the photographs from my 2011 trip to Iceland! I’ll get the best up on my site over the next week or so. At least I’ve avoided the second anniversary of the trip…

There was a wonderful little twist in the tail. I was processing the last few shots, most of which were taken on my Canon 7D, and the very last were a couple of shots taken walking away from one of our locations, when the sun suddenly hit the waterfalls just right. I assumed that these were also from the 7D, but the filename and data tell a different story. These were taken on my diminutive Canon S95. Not bad, huh?

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/a-delightful-little-surprise/feed/2Improved Capturehttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/improved-capture/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/improved-capture/#respondTue, 04 Jun 2013 06:02:03 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1243Continue reading →]]>Following on from the last post, I thought I’d pop up an example to highlight the improvements possible through just the right choice and use of software. The picture above was taken back in 2008, on my old Canon 40D. As soon as I’d taken it I knew that I had a great latent image, but the very high dynamic range was a real struggle. The original in-camera JPEG is long gone, but the following version with no adjustments shows the problem: the sun and its reflections are completely blown out, and the automatic metering has substantially under-exposed the darker parts of the scene:

My original development using Bibble 4 was a partial success. I could recover some of the colour in the sky (although obviously not the sun itself), and I could reveal some of the shadow detail, although the fisherman himself was never much more than a very dark silhouette. However, this was at the cost of substantial colour noise in the mid-tones, such as the breaking waves, and some very odd banding around the sun:

Onscreen this image works fairly well, but I could never get a satisfactory print, and it was rejected for stock use because as a thumbnail it just looks like a dark splodge. Successive versions of Bibble didn’t do much better, so much so that I’ve kept the Bibble 4 version as the best compromise.

Enter Capture One, and with relatively little effort I get the results shown at the top. I much prefer this version: you can see some detail even in the darkest area of the fisherman’s body, and the overall feel is not so markedly “low key”. There’s also very little noise. I haven’t tried printing it yet, but I suspect there won’t be many problems.

Oddly when I showed these to Frances she still preferred the Bibble version, because she felt it portrayed the mood better. However, I’m definitely going for the Capture One version. Which do you prefer?

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/improved-capture/feed/0What’s More Important: Hardware or Software?http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/whats-more-important-hardware-or-software/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/whats-more-important-hardware-or-software/#respondMon, 20 May 2013 20:48:32 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1239Continue reading →]]>We live, as some of you might have noticed, in a digital age. The displacement of older technologies by digital versions has been accompanied and largely enabled by rapid, substantial advances in technology. Yet a couple of recent experiences suggest to me that we may be reaching a point in many areas where further hardware change is of less importance than improvements to the supporting software.

This has most clearly been brought home to me in respect of cameras. My older, larger, cameras and lenses work by delivering high quality optics coupled with relatively straightforward processing of the captured image from the sensor. The newer, smaller cameras make some dramatic compromises on optical accuracy, and then correct the errors in software. This works surprisingly well, but introduces the challenge that if you want to shoot in RAW format and develop the shots yourself, you need RAW processing software capable of reproducing the same, or better, corrections.

That’s been a problem for me, as the software I was using (the former Bibble, now Aftershot Pro) didn’t have adequate support for my new Panasonic GH2 and its diminutive lenses. Also new owners Corel seem to be determined to kill the software through negligence, which makes the prospect of improvements unlikely. (That’s another story, to follow…)

This week I got a bit disheartened, fearing that I was becoming “locked out” of both new cameras and fully developing my work with the GH2, and finally bit the bullet. I didn’t buy a new camera, I started evaluating alternative RAW processors. After a couple of false starts I have settled on Capture One from Phase One. The results so far are very promising: it not only corrects the distortions of my Micro Four Thirds lenses, but it delivers silky smooth output from my larger Canons at ISO 3200, and does a remarkable job of highlight recovery. The shot above was taken at ISO 800 from the back of the Royal Albert Hall with my tiny Canon S95. (BTW, Eric Clapton was excellent!)

But the big surprise has been applying Capture One to some of my older images. The following was taken on our 2007 visit to the Southwest USA, using my original Canon 350D. I was never really happy with the Bibble version, which struggled both to recover the blown highlights and to pull some usable shadow detail without excessive noise. The difference using Capture One is dramatic. It’s almost like revisiting the scene with a new camera.

Getting back to the original topic of this post, I’ve also seen the same software-led effect elsewhere. Support for a proper stylus aside, there’s not much in hardware terms between an iPad and my 10″ Galaxy Note, and some might prefer the Apple hardware. However the dramatic differences in software capabilities are a real differentiator. (See my various reports for details.)

I don’t want to belittle the impressive work of digital hardware engineers, and we’ll continue to take the benefits of further advances, but we need to recognise that the efforts of frequently unsung software engineers may be just as, or sometimes even more key to the hardware’s exploitation.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/whats-more-important-hardware-or-software/feed/0Back to the ‘Frayhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/back-to-the-fray/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/back-to-the-fray/#respondThu, 09 May 2013 06:00:42 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1235Continue reading →]]>Oh well… The annual pilgrimage to the sun has come and gone, and it’s back to the ´fray. (I assume that “fray” is a contraction of “affray” – is that correct?)

Updates to my web site are almost complete. As a salutary lesson to others in a similar position, what I had hoped would be a few weeks’ work turned into something which chewed up most of my “development” time for over three months. However I now have a site which works well on almost all devices (although there are a couple of outstanding oddities and the style sheets still need tweaking for phones with relatively low resolution screens, such as older iPhones). I’m hoping my “lessons learned” will make interesting reading to anyone with a similar challenge, and I’m also confident that future changes will be easier to achieve.

I’m also hoping to get back to blogging on other topics, which have been neglected a bit in recent times. If you have any preference on topics then please let me know.

Most of my recent posts have been book reviews, and I thought the blog needed a picture at the top, hence the above. I’ve been processing some outstanding photos from my Iceland trip, and I was rather taken with this one, which is another HDR monochrome development from three originals processed using Photomatix. What do you think?

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/back-to-the-fray/feed/0Review – Olympus TG2 “Tough” Camerahttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/review-olympus-tg2-tough-camera/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/review-olympus-tg2-tough-camera/#respondMon, 29 Apr 2013 11:33:58 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1231Continue reading →]]>There’s a salutory lesson here about not jumping to premature conclusions. Based on my first impressions of this camera I had mentally started drafting a review based on praising the hardware, but with some criticism of the software and firmware. I even had a great tag line: “A camera for adventurers who want a few pictures, rather than photographers who want adventures”. That was before the snorkelling trip…

For many years now if there’s been the prospect of either snorkelling or diving on holiday I’ve taken a Canon PowerShot S-series or G-series camera with its waterproof housing. I’ve had at least three generations of that solution, which have been utterly reliable and produced some good results. However they are a bulky solution in these days of reducing baggage allowances, and somewhat slow and clumsy in operation.

This year, therefore, I decided to try a different solution, and opted after some deliberation for one of the new “ultra tough compacts”. While Canon and Panasonic both have a comparable solution, after some deliberation I went for the Olympus TG2, based on a combination of its looks and spec.

This is supposedly a very tough piece of kit – waterproof to 15m, drop-proof to 2m, crush-proof to 100kg and with a large operating temperature range. The downside is that this is a market where the competition is intense but based on point for point feature matching, with a focus on improving things like nominal depth protection rather than the photographic features.

That meant that even before use in anger there were some compromises: none of the cameras in this class do RAW, even though Canon, for example, support this fully on their smaller high-end compacts like the S95. to make things worse the TG2 also lacks many of the some other fundamental tools to control exposure such as automatic bracketing (despite a very high frame rate which would support it well), or shutter priority.

The lack of these features is a complete mystery to me, when these cameras are allegedly designed to be used in conditions where the lighting as well as the environment will be challenging…

Early trials did suggested that the camera does have accurate, fast autofocus (which was something I particularly wanted), and makes a decent job of auto exposure in most cases. Picture quality is OK, but the noise levels rise rapidly at ISO 800 and above, the JPEGs have a somewhat “overprocessed” look, and there’s some noticeable pincushion distortion on underwater shots, even at medium zoom. These are presumably all the result of the tiny sensor, which is significantly smaller than in compacts like the Canon S95.

So, off to Barbados and into the water with the turtles. One immediate observation was that the display is very difficult to use at snorkelling depths (where there may be quite a lot of ambient light from above/behind you), and the tiny font becomes illegible for a user like me with ageing eyes. A “high contrast” option on the display, and a large-font “quick menu” option (like on all my Canon and Panasonic cameras) would be useful.

However, a few minutes into the snorkelling session I noticed a much more serious problem: the camera kept on switching itself off, and the battery level was dropping almost as I watched. I managed to snatch a couple of shots, but the camera was really misbehaving, and I had to give up.

Back on the boat the problem was immediately apparent – the camera had sprung a leak presumably through the cover for the USB port, as that had evidence of water inside it. However, instead of being limited just to the port section, the water had spread rapidly through the camera with the result that the lens was misting up and the electrical problems were getting rapidly worse. Although I tried drying the camera out and recharging it, it’s now completely dead. Fortunately I had invested in a waterproof SD card, so I managed to rescue a few decent shots, but otherwise it’s a write-off.

This is an extremely poor design. As you have to charge the battery in camera (using the proprietary USB cable – another peeve), there’s no option of just sealing the camera for a complete trip. You would also think that the camera would have some measure of “double sealing” so that in the event of a leak into the port or battery/card openings the water wouldn’t permeate quickly into the rest of the electronics, but this is clearly not the case.

This camera is completely inadequate for its intended use. Fortunately my suppliers (the excellent Wex Photographic) have promised me a full refund. I will not be spending it on Olympus equipment.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/review-olympus-tg2-tough-camera/feed/0Fixing Holeshttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/fixing-holes/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/fixing-holes/#respondThu, 21 Mar 2013 07:07:49 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1205Continue reading →]]>I’m making decent progress rolling out my new design to the website, but apologies if you’re waiting for some more interesting content!

I’ve now got to the “fiddly” stage, making sure that the new theme works on the slightly more tricky pages. Basically a process of “fixing holes”. I’ve also been processing a few more of my photos from Iceland, and I thought this one a neat echo of my other activities!

Please let me know how you get on with the new look website, and particularly if there are any problems on particular devices or browsers…

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/fixing-holes/feed/0Updates Rolling…http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/updates-rolling/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/updates-rolling/#respondWed, 13 Mar 2013 06:43:41 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/?p=1202Continue reading →]]>The updates to my website are now in progress. The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already spotted changes to my blog and front page, and the rest of the website will follow over the next few weeks.

You should now be able to get the full experience of “Thoughts on the World” on all devices

Please bear with me if there’s the odd foible as I complete the changes. Also please let me know if you spot any problem – but don’t forget to let me know what device you’re using.

My blog now supports multiple views, with the default being an “abstract”, giving an experience a bit like Google Currents. Use the icons at the top of the page, just below my title bar, to switch between them. Please let me know what you think.

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/updates-rolling/feed/0Man At Work!http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/man-at-work/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/man-at-work/#respondWed, 20 Feb 2013 10:57:17 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/man-at-work/Continue reading →]]>Apologies to regular readers of my blog for the recent low output. I’m currently working on a major overhaul of my web site which will see it considerably modernised and should enable it to be viewed successfully on all sorts of different devices, but it does mean my time is being taken up with design and programming work rather than “content creation” at the moment… Please watch this space for further announcements.

On a positive note, if, like, me, you’ve embraced Google Currents for keeping up with your blog reading (see Keeping Current) then you may be interested to hear that “Thoughts of the World” is now published as a Google “Edition”. To subscribe and add it to Currents, just click here.

As an architect, I’m used to explaining that the world is not black and white, but has to be appreciated in shades of grey (but maybe not 50! :)). However as a photographer, I’m much more interested in other hues. The picture above is from my Iceland trip, and I call it “50 Shades of Blue”. Enjoy!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/man-at-work/feed/0Photographing Waterfallshttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/photographing-waterfalls/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/photographing-waterfalls/#respondFri, 18 Jan 2013 07:50:34 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2013/photographing-waterfalls/Continue reading →]]>I’m afraid I don’t subscribe to the received wisdom that waterfalls should be photographed with long exposures which capture the flow as a sort of silky mush. That might work for gentle trickles in dappled glades, but if you’re looking at something like Iceland’s mighty Gullfoss you (or at least I) want to somehow capture the power of the flow. However, just setting a fast shutter speed, pointing the camera straight on and freezing the motion doesn’t always work either.

I took around 100 shots around Gullfoss. I’m only really happy with a handfull, but yesterday I discovered this one which I think really works. Although I’ve labelled it “up close and personal” it was actually taken from further away than some of the others, but I like the pattern of flows and rocks revealed in the portrait orientation. I also think that the 1/100 shutter speed gets a pretty good balance between “flow” and “power”, although it’s a lot faster than some would go for. What do you think?

As usual, I tried to take a few notes regarding the more “technical” aspects of our holiday, which may be useful to others planning a similar trip.

One spectacular success was having Laurent Matres’ Photographing the Southwest in Kindle format, with a synced copy on my Galaxy Note phone. On our previous Arizona/Utah trip I missed a couple of the “best shots” because I didn’t refer to Matres’ notes, and at other times we did follow his directions but it was a bit painful lugging quite a heavy book around. The Kindle version solved both those problems, and the Galaxy Note is sufficiently large to be quickly readable, and to render the book’s images clearly and attractively.

It was definitely the right decision for us to hire a convertible. I drive a drop-top in the UK, and we both loved buzzing around with the sun on our faces and the wind in our hair (well, OK, that’s maybe more one for Frances to comment on… :)). However, we seemed to be in a tiny minority driving a soft-top in New Mexico and Colorado, and the rental choice was not good. I’m not sure of the reason, whether the locals are afraid of getting too much sun in the Summer or insufficient weather protection in the Winter, but of course that doesn’t stop us in wet, windy Britain…

We eventually went to Dollar (whereas my first choice would usually be Hertz), and got a Ford Mustang. I can’t fault Dollar’s friendly, efficient service, and would use them again. I can find some fault with the latest-model Mustang, which seems to have definitely regressed compared with the versions I previously drove in the mid-naughties. In particular luggage space seemed to be smaller than I remember, there was very little in-cabin storage, and the CD player wouldn’t play files in WMA format, which put paid to a lot of our music. However, the worst failing was a weird speedometer display cramming an optimistically large speed range into the top half of a small dial, with the result that it can’t be read to an accuracy better than about 5 mph. That doesn’t fit well in a country where a 5 mph error is often enough to earn a speeding ticket. Useless.

Complaints aside, the Mustang did the job, and helped bring us back with a decent tan.

Another trick which worked again was raiding a Radio Shack on the first day and purchasing a can of compressed air. The worst equipment challenge in the American SouthWest is dust, and being able to blow everything clean each day is a real boon. Now all I have to do is find out if I can do the same in Morocco this year…

Cameras

Including our phones we took five cameras this year, which may seem excessive, but each found a genuine use playing to its strengths, and justified its place in the luggage. As usual, the real workhorse was the Canon 7D. Out of a total of about 2050 exposures,1652 (or over 80%) were on the big beast. I have eventually mastered its ergonomic shortcomings, and extensive practice means that its operation is now quite intuitive. I know and can confidently predict its results, which are still better than those from the Panasonic GH2. OK, it’s still an enormous lump and the 15-85mm lens is not the sharpest optical tool, but it works.

The Canon 550D’s main role is as a backup body, offering the same sensor and lens compatibility as the 7D for half the price and weight. However, it came into its own for our balloon trip, where I wanted to carry a lightweight kit which still supported my beloved 70-300mm IS lens. The 550D, 70-300 and 17-85 did the job beautifully. As a result the 550D took 221 shots.

We also carried the Panasonic GH2 and its three lenses. Its main role was as Frances’ camera when she wanted to take her own shots, but I also used it as a lightweight “carry and forget” camera to have with me during shopping trips, evening sorties and similar. It has to be admitted that the 550D and a single zoom lens could also do this, but with less ultimate flexibility and at a higher weight. Having the GH2 along also provided further redundancy should my Canon long or wide zooms pack up, always a consideration given last year’s two lens failures. We took 172 shots on the GH2.

On a less positive note GH2 battery life is not good. A charge is genuinely only good for about 100 shots, and to add injury to insult Panasonic now effectively prevent the use of anything other than their own full price batteries, at £50 a pop or higher. Neither Canon suffers either limitation. It’s not a critical problem, but does place some boundaries on the Panasonic’s role.

We both took a few shots on our phones as well (I took 4 on the Galaxy Note), mainly of things we wanted to share immediately with specific friends. However, I certainly wouldn’t advocate one practice I saw – a lady whose husband was having the “trip of a lifetime” in the cab of the Silverton-Durango railroad, and she was trying to capture his arrival using just the camera on an iPad!

The Gitzo tripod paid its fare with the low light photography at the balloon fiesta, but otherwise saw very little action. I rely more and more on the combination of modern cameras’ performance at medium-high ISO, and the effective combination of my steady hand and Image Stabilisation. As the Americans say, “your mileage may vary”, but I now just assume that I will work hand-held if the sun is up or I need to move around.

Given the extremely photogenic subjects, and a lot of fairly friendly lighting, my hit rate was pretty high, especially for the more static subjects. After an initial edit I still have about 1200 frames worth processing, and I expect to end up with about 200 worth showing to someone else. Cutting this down to about 100 which find their way to my blog and tablet may be a challenge.

Overall a wonderful trip, and very successful source for photography. Roll on the next one!

A very Happy New Year, and all the best for 2013!

]]>http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2012/usa-2012-technical-review/feed/0The Back of Beyondhttp://www.andrewj.com/blog/2012/the-back-of-beyond/
http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2012/the-back-of-beyond/#respondWed, 12 Dec 2012 18:32:31 +0000http://www.andrewj.com/blog/2012/the-back-of-beyond/Continue reading →]]>I haven’t posted any photos since the end of our USA trip, but I have, finally, got back to sorting out my Iceland photos from last year. I thought, therefore, I would share this shot with you. It’s from an un-named spot in the Fjallabak region. Fjallabak (pronounced fiat-la-back) means “back of the mountains”, which is delightfully literal in this case.

I love the various circular swirls which are a recurring feature in this image. I’m not sure whether they all have a common geological cause.

I also did an HDR version of a similar shot, which brought out more of the sky detail but reduced the nice smooth feel of the mountain shapes. However, the black and white conversion looks quite dramatic, and with a slightly different crop works quite well:

I need to do a bit more work on the HDR version – at full resolution there’s a bit of odd “banding” in the sky – but I think it looks promising.

Cold night. Perfect storm of badly fitted hotel windows, unusably noisy heater and no spare blanket. I haven’t been that cold since a night in the lodge at the top of the Tioga Pass. The Best Western Rio Grande Inn is definitely a notch down from the others on this trip.
However everything was forgiven when we drove to the airport with the sky full of balloons again.